Chrissy Crosby is determined to win a buckle at her next rodeo but it feels like life is getting in her way from the classroom bully picking on Chrissy and her new friend Chun, her father losing his job and her horse getting injured. Can Chrissy, with the help of her friends and family, still do well despite life beating her down?

This was a book packed with a lot of action and activity, and also covered some pretty serious topics from bullying to domestic abuse. I think Chrissy is a real firespitter of a character - she's full of gumption with a lot of passion for what she loves and who she loves, and will also defend her friends and family from those trying to bring them down. We see Chrissy get into some bad moments in this book including a physical fight (more than once) with Jodie Lee who is not a very nice little girl.

I do think a lot happened to Chrissy in a short space of time that felt a bit much for a young girl to have to deal with - her grandmother died in the first chapter, and this was swiftly followed by her goat being killed by vicious dogs (I mean, wow), her horse almost slitting her neck open and then her other horse getting colic because of a mistake she made - and this is on top of her father also losing his job and basically getting bullied in school. And there was also a freak tornado in the middle that almost killed the school bus of kids. Which is all a lot for a child to handle - and a lot of the time the only advice her parents had was 'listen to God'. There was probably a bit too much speaking out to the lord in this for me, as personally, not my thing but understand the book is written and aimed at young Christians.

So this book was fine, the rodeo was fun but ultimately not one for me as I'm not the target audience.