I am pleased to have begun reading Anna Rashbrook with the penultimate of her 5-book series, “The God, Horses and Love Memoirs”. She has left a privileged but dysfunctional home behind, overcome her apparently “terrible teenage behaviour” described in Book 1, and is gaining work experience on a Swiss farm as a prerequisite to starting agricultural college back in England. Book 4 is enjoyable on many counts. It has been created from a collection of letters she exchanged with her mother at home in England with some linking explanatory text. As such, it’s refreshingly direct and honest and lacks the self-conscious preening that mars many memoirs. It gives an insight into a sector of English society that knows intimately, domestic animals from horses to dogs, cats and rarer animals and secretly – sometimes brazenly -- prefers them to fellow human beings. The reason often is that unlike human beings, who tend to be difficult and demanding, dogs offer unconditional love despite being occasionally neglected and never take revenge. Another reason is that this young Anna comes across as adaptable and willing as a farmworker. She’s working on a small, labour-intensive mixed farm – something that in my experience demands tenacity and stamina on a continuous basis. She’s no push-over and stands up for herself against farmers who might otherwise have succeeded in exploiting her good nature. From beginning to end, I found myself rooting for this plucky young woman, as well as reading between the lines, that her earlier home years in England must have been anything but idyllic. This 4th of a captivating series shows how character and perseverance overcome challenging odds. Teenagers would do well to read this.