Finished reading the long awaited addition to the Jinny at Finmory series written by Sian Shipley – what can I say. Wow. I wasn’t disappointed. Sian’s writing beautifully captures the spirit of Patricia Leitch’s Jinny series.

*spoilers*

Set around 2 years after Running Wild, Jinny is now 16 and preparing to sit her standard grades. Still as tempestuous as ever, the book opens with Jinny having a very belligerent interview with a careers advisor who is not remotely impressed with Jinny’s scruffy appearance and dismisses her as uncooperative and rude. 

Only Mr Eccles, her Art Teacher has any time for her and goes to the trouble of securing her an interview with a prestigious art college in London. Jinny is predictably reluctant. If she goes to this art college she’ll have to leave Shantih at Finmory however, she agrees to attend the interview which will take place in August.

In the meantime, Jinny sees an article in a newspaper that gives her tragic news of her previous acquaintance Kat Dalton. She has committed suicide. A distraught Jinny has a revelation about Kat’s relationship with her stepfather Paul. I was very impressed with this chapter as it shows that Sian had the same train of thought about Paul’s abusive relationship with Kat that I had (I wrote about this in a previous post).

Another thread of the story is that the travelling folk are on the moor once again and they have a stallion that is apparently destined to breed with Shantih but Jinny, ever the possessive doesn’t want Shantih to have a foal but it seems that the power of the Red Horse has other ideas. Jinny goes to great lengths to keep Shantih away from the stallion, even boarding her at Miss Tuke’s out of the way.

The ever perfect Petra has her 20th birthday party which turns out to also be her announcing that she is engaged to her long term boyfriend. Jinny is surprised to see her old friend Sue Horton at the party but is so disgusted by how much her friend has changed, she then proceeds to behave outrageously rudely, walking out of the party and getting a bus home with Ken, to whom she pours out all her woes. Is she doing the right thing in keeping Shantih away from the stallion?

Jinny finally realises Shantih’s destiny and allows her to go off and mate with the stallion and having finally done the right thing she seems to calm down and focus towards her interview with the art college.

Jinny, accompanied by Mrs Manders, Petra and a quietly supportive Ken head down to London for Jinny’s interview. The people who interview Jinny seem to be very much her sort of people and at this point in the book I am really rooting for her to decide to go. Following the interview, Ken accompanies her to the National Gallery where she makes a beeline for the Stubbs portrait of WhistleJacket. In front of this magnificent portrait (I have a print of this on my wall), she plucks up the courage to open her standard grade results….she has done better than expected.

Now waiting for the result of her interview. Miss Tuke enters Jinny and Shantih in for a dressage class at Inverberg Show. There she completes a beautiful dressage test and beats her old adversary Claire Burnley. Claire is now engaged to a wussy chinless wonder who she can boss around (haha). In a very comical exchange that made me laugh out loud, Petra’s fiancee manages to impress Jinny by not only recognising that the dressage saddle that Shantih is wearing is a Stubben (lent to her by Miss Tuke) but also putting Claire in her place with a fantastically snide put down 😂

At home, the letter containing the results of Jinny’s interview await her. Was she successful? And if so will she accept the place? 

Follow on books written by authors other than the original can be a bit hit and miss however I thoroughly enjoyed every page of this one. So much so I went straight back to the beginning and started reading it again. Thank you so much for bringing Jinny and Shantih back to us Sian Shipley 😊🥰