“We lost her mom, she’s being bottle fed.” Nate stood up, and reached out to the colt. I want you to train her.” The man paused. “Son, this here colt is a direct descendant of Powder Puff. Puzzled, Nate looked at the colt, then at the man, who seemed somewhat embarrassed. He put the colt down, and the little mare stood on shaky legs.

He was holding a gangly colt in his arms. He recognized the man who had been sitting in front of him in the grandstand. I only teared up a little when the cutting horse (it’s a skill set, not a breed) went crazy at the sight of Cassie and her evil doll, ending up breaking her leg and having to be killed, but I flat-out BAWLED at this part:

There really should be warnings for animal deaths in books. Pebbles wins her competition, but then something awful happens. I’m not sure if that’s meant to be “the evil doll is influencing Cassie,” or if it’s “the doll wants to be with Cassie because Cassie is already a little bit evil.” When the game finally opens another guy almost wins it for his girlfriend, but Cassie distracts him by throwing her darts into his leg. Cassie sees a doll being offered as a prize for a dart game, and immediately becomes obsessed with it. When you add in the part where the Protestant minister who does the end-of-book exorcism is her adoptive father, it kind of reinforces my theory that these skewed heavily towards Christian superstition/indoctrination territory.Īnyway. I mean, I’m pretty sure Jack Chick would still say she was putting her soul at risk by reading Tarot cards, but that’s pretty Christian-ish for a random fortune teller. And what is more supernatural than God?” (p. “But why is that so strange? The occult is concerned with supernatural forces. “But I thought-I thought you believed in-” The presence of a fortune-teller on the “good” side of things temporarily ruined my theory that this entire series sprang out of someone’s desire to write a whole bunch of Chick-Tract style religious fears into a horror series, but she’s…awfully Christian for a fortune-teller: Jack and Cassie met at the previous year’s fair, and Cassie’s father is an agricultural agent, so we’re in wholesome rural territory here.Ī fortune-teller warns Jack that he’ll have to be strong, and sees “very black clouds” in Cassie’s immediate future. She persuades her father to go to the State Fair a day early, because she’s eager to share every possible moment with her long-distance farmboy boyfriend, Jack.Ĭassie’s attending the fair to enter her doll collection in a competition, and Jack’s there, because his kid brother, Nate, has entered his cutting horse, Pebbles. I’m creeped out by dolls anyway (even perfectly ordinary dolls are a little bit spooky to me), so the “this is what Chelsea Clinton would look like if she were inanimate and also possessed” thing going on in the cover art really freaks me out.Ĭassie, our heroine, is a doll collector.

Well, this was disturbing in every possible way.

The Bargain by Rex Sparger