Poor Kim, who’s crazy about horses, has little going for her. At school, her classmates tease her about her haunted house and the crazy man – possibly her own great-grandfather – who killed himself there years before. At home, her parents fight constantly, and Kim wonders if her mother will finally leave her temperamental father for good. Kim also misses the support of her beloved Gramma-Lou, who’s sick and can’t have Kim to visit as usual at her cottage.

Nova Scotia author Anne Louise MacDonald has taken a girl-loves-horses story, combined it with elements of a YA problem novel, and added a dash of mystery to create an engaging first novel aimed at younger teens. The book centres on Kim’s obsession with finding a ghostly black horse she thinks she’s seen on her neighbour’s property. The prospect of discovering a real, live horse she can visit nearby interests her much more than the possibility that it could be a supernatural creature.

Another spectre already haunts Kim and her family: a legacy of physical and emotional abuse. As the novel progresses, we learn more about the ill treatment that Gramma-Lou suffered at the hands of both her father and her husband, and about the volatile temperament that Kim so dislikes in her own father.

MacDonald (a former vet’s assistant and Pony Club instructor) duly brings together all her narrative threads at the conclusion. Some connections are a bit forced, as when Kim’s nightmares mirror a horrific experience from Gramma-Lou’s childhood, and when the school bully is exposed as the story’s villain. Kim’s achievement of her dream of owning a horse is overdone, but that’s the only satisfying ending for a horse book. This book will appeal mainly to equine enthusiasts.