YA Fresh

Take the Reins Giveaway!

I’m happy to announce a giveaway of Jessica Burkhart’s novel, Take The Reins, the first in her Canterwood Crest middle grade series.

All you have to do is leave a comment telling us YOUR favorite lip gloss flavor (real or imaginary).

And why lip gloss flavor, you ask? Because the main character of Take The Reins, Sasha Silver, is delightfully lip-glossed obsessed, and with all our recent talk here on YA FRESH about lipsticks and glosses, it’s just the thing to do!


I pre-ordered this book, especially excited to read it because my daughter was a horse-obsessed tween reader not so long ago, devouring The Saddle Club books, and wanting more/more/more about horseback riders. Occasionally, I’d picked one up, too, so I knew it would be fun to feed my own tween horseback riding fix!

Accordingly, I found that I read this book as a reader, a mother and a writer, pausing to appreciate elements like the pure love that Sasha feels for her horse, Charm, and the thorough details of his grooming, training and showing. I smiled at the little touches like aforementioned lip gloss collection, Sasha’s roommate’s love of cooking, and the occasional, heart-pounding appearances of a Zac Efron look-alike cutie.

Overall, I felt the theme of this book was about the value of friendship--making the right ones, and learning to deal with the wrong ones--which is something most every tween reader has either gone through or will go through.

So if there’s a tween reader in your life who likes horses and lip gloss and chocolate chip pancakes and cute boys, this book is for her! But it’s by no means “restricted” to that demographic...I mean, we’re all just tweens who got a little older, right?

So go ahead and leave a comment! I’ll choose a random winner, to be announced after the contest closes at 7:00 pm PST on Sunday.