Based on interviews with a racehorse trainer, Kick the Latch is an odd little book. It's set out in bursts of moments of her life. Little stories that are anything from a few lines to a few pages long. The prose is blunt, almost bare, and that's what sucks you in and makes it ⭐⭐⭐⭐ for me.

Often the stories are harsh and the treatment of both humans and animal awful. Yet throughout, it's clear that Sonia deeply cares for the animals (and later, people) in her care.

I read this thinking it was non-fiction, not realising it was fiction based on interviews. Perhaps I feel a little cheated by that. It's definitely a tale of American horse racing from a certain period of time. Perhaps it's my second hand knowledge of the industry in the UK but I think a lot of the practices mentioned are no longer in practice. If not, I sure hope they aren't.

There are definitely some triggers thrown in bluntly. Waking up with a gun to her head, sexual violence, animal abuse - those kinds of things. So that's maybe worth a look into before reading. Due to the nature of the way the book's written, none of these things are gone into in any detail.