Leaping Hearts by Jessica Bird is a tale of passion and perseverance set in the competitive world of show jumping, where a rogue stallion and a legendary trainer change one rider’s life.

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I can’t even begin to tell you how happy I was when the audiobook for this started and there was a short intro from Jessica Bird aka JR Ward that talks about how this particular book came to be and what it means to her. It definitely gave me a different perspective before diving into the story and I was able to appreciate some things more. Especially knowing this was her FIRST EVER story, the fact that she got lucky to get some pointers from Sue Grafton, the fact that she wasn’t scared to curse about it, what she learned from Ms. Grafton and how that affected her writing in this book as well as in the future.LEAPING HEARTS is a story about heart, hardships, following your gut and your dreams and not holding back. AJ Sutherland buys a horse at an auction for the purpose of training it and riding it for show jumping. But this horse is wild. Her family turns away from her, she has to pay for the horse with her own money and is left with no where to go (her and the horse) and no way to train.

That’s where Devlin McCloud comes in. He’s a legend but his career ended abruptly when he had an accident that injured his leg and ended with his horse being put down. That was a year ago and he’s been a recluse since. He was at the auction and saw something in AJ and Sabbath and when AJ asks he agrees to help train her and the horse as well as give her a place to crash.

AJ is young, idealistic, very determined and has a definite connection to Sabbath. I loved to read about that. How she was able to calm down and tame such a wild animal and together overcame some of the mental obstacles that were there. She is also infatuated with Devlin, of course always had a bit of a celebrity crush on him. I thought it was very sweet to see her crush on him and at the same time stand her ground not falling totally at his feet or jumping when he said it.

Devlin is a bit of a tortured hero in this story, he walks with a bit of a limp still from his injury, uses a cane, and has so many issues to get over in his mind before he can really be a functioning adult and be in a relationship. But AJ was perfect to slowly bring him out of that funk and get him to open up his heart.

I loved the romance, I loved the story. It was a nice feel-good book with enough emotion and drama that it felt real.

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