Jinny has always been one of my favourite main protagonists in the pony story genre but she does tend to be a bit obsessive, over the top and do some extraordinarily idiotic things at times. In a way I think it’s quite good though because we all do idiotic things at times so it makes her all the more human, however in A Devil to Ride she does act in a way that totally infuriates me.

The storyline is that Jinny becomes obsessed with making friends with Clare Burnley because Clare is experienced with horses, and she hope that Clare will help her with Shantih as she’s pretty much uncontrollable. Clare is a snooty, overbearing stuck up bitch who ignores Jinny until her awful brother Spencer goes away and she offers to help Jinny with Shantih but pretty much uses Jinny as an unpaid groom for her own horses.

The other storyline in this book is that there is a pair of Ospreys nesting on Finmory moors and two guys from the RSPB are staying at Finmory to watch the nest in case of any egg collectors. The Manders family including Jinny are rota’d in to take stints watching the nest during the day.

This is where the despicable part comes in. Jinny, having made a disastrous entry with Shantih at the Inverberg show tells the Burnleys about the Ospreys in an attempt to get them to pay attention to her – Aaaagh!

The next day, Jinny is on nest guarding duty when Clare ‘randomly’ appears with her two horses and lures Jinny away with an invitation to visit a nearby Arab stud (in the Scottish highlands? 🤔). Jinny foolishly abandons the nest hoping to return before Ken arrives to take over. Predictably when she gets back to the hide, the Osprey’s nest has been raided.

Even more predictably, Jinny finds out later that Clare’s horrible brother Spencer is an egg collector and Clare deliberately lured her away so that he could raid the nest.

So yes, Jinny does totally infuriate me in this book, not only is she blinded towards Clare Burnley and her horrible, entitled personality, so much so she stands by and watches Clare bully Shantih, she also acts in a totally selfish and irresponsible way towards the Ospreys, causing their eggs to come to harm. That being said, I guess she did learn a hard lesson in this book.

I didn’t really like the way the RSPB guys left her an envelope with a fragment of Osprey egg shell in it, it seemed a bit petty but I might have felt like doing the same thing in their position.