Maggie Stiefvater is a relatively new name in YA fiction but she’s certainly put her stamp on the genre! The Shiver trilogy was outstanding, especially if you were Team Jacob and like your men rather hairy! She put a different and very interesting spin on the traditional werewolf myth. With The Scorpio Races, she takes on the water horse myth and does it was such passion and insight that this book is destined to soar to the top of the charts, as well.

Water horses are the stuff of myth and legend and crashing waves, as beautiful as they are deadly.  The stormy seas of November toss horses of all colors up on the beach, where only the bravest of islanders are waiting to catch them.  For Puck and Sean, however,  these horses and the races are part of the very fabric of their island home.

Puck a 16-year-old island girl lost her parents when water horses attacked their fishing boat a few years earlier and now her family is in trouble.  They are about to be evicted from the only home they know; Puck is in serious jeopardy of losing Dove, the horse that is almost part of the family; and Gabe, the eldest, has decided to leave the island for good.   The only way out is to win the Scorpio Races.  The problem?  No woman or girl has ever ridden in the Scorpio Races.  It’s a deadly game and every year, people die.

Sean is the reigning champion, four years running.  He is unbeatable on the back of his fiery red water horse, Corr.  He works for Benjamin Malvern, who owns Corr.  This year, however, the race will change his life in more ways than one.  Sean is racing for the right to buy Corr and get out from under Malvern’s control.  He also has Puck in his sights and she is quickly making her way into his heart.  In a game of life and death, the lines blur between winning and losing.