by Christina Lynch
First sentence: “Penny Marcus opens her front door to find Ed, the local sheriff’s deputy, on the doorstep.”
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Release date: November 5, 2025
Content: There is some swearing, including several f-bombs, and some violence to animals. It will be in the Fiction section.

This one is going to be hard to sum up. It’s a dual narrative: Penny is arrested for a murder that happened in her presence 25 years ago, but that she says she didn’t commit. However, there aren’t any witnesses, so she’s in a hopeless place as her court-appointed lawyer tries to convince her to take a plea.

The other narrative is that of Pony, Penny’s, well, pony, from her childhood. Pony is bitter towards humans because Penny left him suddenly. But, over the course of Pony’s travels after being sold, he learned to forgive, and then decided to go find Penny. This part of the book is very loosely based on the Odyssey, and it’s sweeping and wild as Pony crisscrosses the country over years looking for Penny.

It sounds weird – and it’s nothing like what I was expecting when I started it. I think I was expecting something more like The Hollow Kingdom, or even perhaps the mystery that the jacket copy described. But, instead, I got a love letter to human-animal connection, as both Penny and Pony’s lives were changed by each other. It was sweet, it was funny at times, and it was just completely full of heart.

I absolutely loved it.