Rowena’s review of Racing Savannah (Hundred Oaks #4) by Miranda Kenneally.
They’re from two different worlds.
He lives in the estate house, and she spends most of her time in the stables helping her father train horses. In fact, Savannah has always been much more comfortable around horses than boys. Especially boys like Jack Goodwin—cocky, popular and completely out of her league. She knows the rules: no mixing between the staff and the Goodwin family. But Jack has no such boundaries.
With her dream of becoming a jockey, Savannah isn’t exactly one to follow the rules either. She’s not going to let someone tell her a girl isn’t tough enough to race. Sure, it’s dangerous. Then again, so is dating Jack..
This is Book 4 in the Hundred Oaks series by Miranda Kenneally and while it wasn’t my favorite book in the series, I still enjoyed it.
Savannah is starting her senior year at Hundred Oaks, a new school far away from her old school because her father started working at a new place, managing the stable of a large estate that races horses. Savannah has always grown up poor so when she comes across Jack Goodwin, the Prince of the Estate, it’s hard for her to remember her place. They come from two different worlds, he’s rich and she’s not. He sits at the dinner table and she serves his dinner. But despite knowing that he’s her boss, her Dad’s boss even doesn’t stop the two of them from liking each other.
Jack shouldn’t be trying to get with one of his employees but there’s something about Savannah that he can’t stay away from and you see him struggle with trying to do the right thing for his family, to stay away from Savannah and failing miserably.
Both Jack and Savannah were interesting characters. There were times when I wanted to strangle Savannah because her attitude and her emotions made me want to smack her. Jack wasn’t any better. He made some dumbass mistakes too. Mistakes that made me want to karate kick him in the junk. But even with all of the ways that they annoyed me (Savannah jumping down Jack’s throat when he wanted to protect her & Jack being a dumb ass about Savannah’s feelings), Kenneally wrote their characters in a way that made them interesting anyway.
Together, Jack and Savannah were cute. I liked their interactions and I liked getting to know them and I really liked getting to know their friends as well. Rory was such a cutie patootie and I loved his relationship with Vanessa. I liked Vanessa and Savannah’s friendship too.
My main gripes were with the way that Savannah and Jack handled their relationship. I didn’t like the way that Savannah thought it was okay to get mad at Jack for things that were out of his control and I didn’t like the way that Jack try to dismiss Savannah’s feelings for him but while I was annoyed, I remembered that these two are so young and the way that reacted to the things that were thrown at them rang true for their age. They reacted the way that most teens would have reacted and as soon as I remembered that, it was okay.
What I like about this series is that we’re living in the same world as the previous books but we’re getting stories from a wide variety of people, not just one set of people. The characters in this series are linked but they’re not really close friends or anything like that and I enjoy getting to know more than just the core group of friends from the first couple of books. This way, it feels like even though it’s a series, we’re meeting a fresh set of characters with each book and it always feels brand new.
This was another book that I dug right in and it hasn’t dampened my love for the series. I can’t wait to read the next book, Breathe Annie Breathe.
Grade: 3.5 out of 5
This book is available from Sourcebooks Fire. You can purchase it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
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