Ok, I'll admit it, I've grown out of that 'every little girl's horse crazy stage' so this isn't exactly coming from a horse fanatic. But even when I did like, no LOVE, horses, I never cared for these books. I always found that the books had unnecessary length to them which dragged out the plot. The plot was never too interesting, anyway. In this book the main character, Sam (who is supposedly 13, but having been 13 myself I know that it would have been much more accurate to label her as 10 or 11 according to her personality) adopts a draft horse to save from slaughter, but the new horse ends up causing havoc. Same old, same old. If Sam can't handle the auction block without chickening out and having to 'save' a horse, why would she go? Although the horse causes trouble in parts of the book it ends happily (of course.) Would we faint if a children's book actually ended unhappily? Some may say it's depressing, I call it realistic. So if your sick of the recycled plots, happy-ending, little girl vibe of horse stories, this series will be of no relief to you.

Phantom Stallion #9 Gift Horse is another great book in a great series. I have enjoyed reading the first 11 books in this interesting and exciting series. I like this series because it has realistic characters and both wild and tame horses. I highly recommend this series for anyone who likes horses.

I enjoyed this book very much except for it didn't have much about the Phantom. I thought it was cool that Sam rescued Tinkerbell though. This is not my favorite Phantom Stallion book(actually it's one of my least favs.) Anyhow I would still recommend this book to you because everyone has a different oppinion. So go and read this book!