Book Review: Blind Your Ponies

Blind Your Ponies by Stanley West

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m a sucker for a good sports underdog story like Hoosiers and Rudy. Blind Your Ponies is that and so much more. Set in the small town of Willow Creek, Montana, a town whose basketball team hasn’t won a game in the last five years. The story centers around the coach Sam Pickett but there is huge cast of unique supporting characters that reside in the small town. As Sam tries for one last season to build a winning basketball team, he is also struggling with a past that haunts him. As the story progresses, Sam becomes aware that most everyone in the town has personal challenges too and he looks to them for inspiration.

I became totally absorbed in the story – the characters were all really well-developed and relatable. However, I listened to this book on audio and at times it was hard to keep track of some of the minor characters. Having a paper copy and being able to page back through what I had already read would have been helpful. The other criticism I have is that some of the dialogue was a little over the top and at times a tad cheesy.

Even though this is at heart an underdog sports story, the author kept it from being too predictable – I was still on the edge of my seat at times.

An interesting side note: Stanley Gordon West self-published this book in 2001 and he sold 40,000 copies of it before it was discovered by Algonquin and republished under their imprint in January 2011.

Buy this book at:
Amazon The Kindle Store Powell’s Books

(I received a copy of this audio book courtesy of the publisher and the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.)