What is it about girls and horses? Of all the animal-human relationships that appear in literature for young readers, this one is rivaled in its frequency perhaps only by boys and canines. B.C. author Dayle Campbell Gaetz trots out the girl-and-her-horse trope in her sort-of sequel to two previous books featuring young heroines, The Golden Rose (1996) and Living Freight (1998). Though technically the continuation of those earlier stories, Taking the Reins is strewn with enough background information for it to be read as a standalone novel.

It is the mid-1860s. Fourteen-year-old Katherine Harris and 13-year-old Emma Curtis have both emigrated from England to the new colony of British Columbia. While Katherine’s family struggles to establish a farm in the wilderness bordering the Fraser River, Emma works as a maid for the Governor of Victoria. Financial difficulties force Katherine to sell her beloved horse, Nugget, who passes through a few hands before being purchased for Emma by her father, a man who didn’t know she existed until her arrival in B.C. By chance, Katherine, in Victoria to attend school, becomes a riding instructor to the horse-shy Emma. Despite a series of misconceptions about each other, the duo eventually bond over the beast and become friends, devising plans that better both of their lives.

While the plot canters along at a good pace, Gaetz’s earnest tone feels stale and unlikely to resonate with today’s savvy tweens. The girls are also tired archetypes: Katherine is a headstrong, budding feminist railing against the constraints of Victorian-era sensibility, while Emma is a former guttersnipe with a chip on her shoulder whose greatest battles are with her own sense of self-worth.

Throughout the book, Gaetz sprinkles interesting historical tidbits about the settlement of B.C., the lack of women’s rights, class disparity, and racial tension, but there is little here that hasn’t been done before in similar fashion.