The second book in the Fortune's Fool series, we follow Simon as he attempts to take on the German eventing world as a working student but is left disappointed by his experience, and his much to be desired mentor. Moving to a new yard, and back home to the US, Simon begins to even Milton but learns that his new boss is tough in more ways than one and his ideas on how to treat problem horses are a lot different to Simon's.

This was a fun horse book, and a real palate cleanser after my last read which was a bit shocking and violent. So to be in a world that is purely driven by the love of horses and the need to win in eventing was fun, fun, fun. I do love Simon's endless determination and his competitive drive and I love that in this series, the reader is thrown into the horse world, nothing held back. You don't read these books if you are a complete novice when it comes to horses, you have to have some idea how things work or you'd be completely lost.

Simon as a character can be a strange one - on one hand, I love his grit and determination, and I love that you see the softer side of him come out with how he treats horses (always carrying treats or sharing his goodies with them) and some of his relationships like with Ben and Max. But he's also incredibly arrogant to the point he can sometimes be insufferable to read - like he really is good at everything without even trying too hard, and he will remind the reader of it constantly - and he is often demeaning when it comes to how he views people who can't commit 100% of their time to horses which is just wrong, and i hated reading that. There's also a point in this book that shocked me a little bit and it's Simon's statement that he didn't believe in bisexuality - the complete bi-erasure is just a huge no no and it was a bit more disappointing as I read this during Pride month and for a Queer Lit Readathon!

There are some parts of this book that go by really fast, and sometimes I wish the story was a bit tighter and didn't span so long so fast. I'm pretty sure this spanned about three years. Sometimes Simon would start somewhere new and the next chapter, it would be nine months later. A lot of things sometimes seem to happen off page as well or there is not a lot of time spent on them such as Max and Simon suddenly completely shacking up when they moved to Freddie's.

There are a few things in this book that I often see in self-published works which personally, I don't enjoy and that's name dropping books and music that exist in the real world. For me, it tends to date the story and honestly I really don't care that Simon loves Brandon Flowers and The Clash so much. I also don't need descriptions of every piece of clothing he wears and if it's somehow connected to the band. You can just say 'band tee'. The same with if he was reading The Scorpio Races (which I admit was fun because it's fantasy horse focused) or Divergent.

While I enjoy Simon's relationships aren't the main focus in the book, they are often let to build up off page as well and it can be jarring to return to them and it to go so deep suddenly - such as Ben and Simon suddenly saying the L-word. I also think that Simon often doesn't deserve the people he is with aka Max. I wish some of the scenes in here to do with lovemaking didn't feel so seedy at times. While they aren't descriptive, there's something secretive and almost shameful of Simon and Ben going to have sex in a part. I'm also hyper-vigilant that this is a gay couple being written by a woman but would like to stress that I don't feel there's any fetishisation going on here as the romances tend to be such a side story, they really are not the focus of the book at all.

I enjoy this world and Simon's journey as an eventing rider. I'm still waiting for the deep horse-rider relationship that we didn't have with Fortune, and again didn't seem to have with Milton. Looking forward to reading the next book!