Meet Pony. Once owned and beloved by Penny, Pony got sold without warning when Penny was twelve. More than two decades later, he's still bitter about it and one day runs away to find Penny and confront her.Christina Lynch's PONY CONFIDENTIAL is a funny and sometimes wry murder mystery told in alternating chapters from the perspectives of this likable pony and the equally likable Penny.

Although Lynch's book is cute, it avoids cutesiness thanks to its tone of occasional cynicism from Pony and plentiful sarcastic asides from a pessimistic goat friend. In Penny's chapters this fluff book loses a little fluff as Lynch highlighted some of what's unfair about the criminal-justice system. She used Pony's chapters to (nongraphically) highlight animal mistreatment. Nevertheless, Lynch kept heavy observations minimal to ensure her light read stayed light, and here her definition of "light" means a winning combination of whimsy, charming animals, ridiculousness, and a dash of tang to prevent it all from becoming saccharine. Lynch created something strongly heartwarming and easy to like, even by readers who normally prefer deep, serious mysteries.

Given the premise, Patsy should have been more emotionally resonant. Nicole Dennis-Benn wrote about a Jamaican immigrant's experience in America after she leaves her young daughter behind in Jamaica. The relationship between the two isn't established strongly, so I didn't feel the sadness Dennis-Benn wanted me to feel. The main character's struggle to understand and accept her sexual identity feels similarly distant. What redeems Patsy is Dennis-Benn's writing, which is literary and contemplative without ever being fussy.