Right from page three, when a grizzly interrupts Becky’s hissy fit in a mountain meadow, Sky Horse hasn’t a dull moment. Becky is outraged at being stuck in the wilderness of Mustang Mountain Ranch with only horses, parents, ranchhands, and bears for company. We find out how very isolated the ranch is when Becky’s cousin Alison arrives from New York City with a friend named Meg for the summer vacation. A freak June snowstorm maroons Becky and her visitors halfway up the mountain, and suddenly the three 13-year-old girls, two horses, and an injured cowboy are in trouble. Alison is outraged, but Meg views it as a great adventure. All three girls soon discover strengths they didn’t know they had.

Siamon is an experienced writer for pre-teens, with many titles to her credit in the Sleepover and Stage School series under the pseudonym Geena Dare. She has packed this new series with hot themes: horses, family frictions, peer rivalries, and the fantasy of relationships with older men of 19 or 20. It’s also a survival story, in which keeping a cool head can mean the difference between life and death.

The climax seriously strains credulity: a plane carrying a half-million-dollar horse crashes on the mountainside just as an enraged grizzly attacks Alison and the cowboy. It’s a little too much excitement for me, but younger readers will no doubt eat it up. Siamon ties up most loose ends, yet leaves us wanting to find out if Sky Horse will recover from his trauma and whether those interesting older men will hang around. We’ll find out soon in Mustang Mountain 2.