Captivating vast crowds as she progresses from point-to-point to major races, she brings fame and fortune to the syndicate, until, at last, she is entered in the greatest jump race of them all. She always created OTT characters too, but somehow "Jump" was a little too bland with stereotypes and forced puns.

Though superficially very funny, its humour barely concealed the seriousness of its intentions, which can be encapsulated in the single sentence: "Mummy says pardon is a much worse word than fuck. The filly charms everyone in the village, and when tests reveal her to be a spectacularly well-bred racehorse a village syndicate is formed to put the filly into training. Etta never feels at the centre of the story as the other characters drown her out (and this is terribly maddening as I was looking forward to reading an protagonist who isn't the usual first-flush of youth type). Ridden by Rupert’s delectable god-daughter, Amber, Mrs Wilkinson captivates vast crowds as she progresses from point-to-point to major races and brings fame and fortune to the syndicate, until, at last, she is entered in the Grand National. As always with Jilly's books, you get drawn in completely to her world, engaging with and caring about the characters (and awaiting the villains getting their comeuppance).When her bullying husband dies, Etta's selfish, ambitious children drag her from her lovely Dorset house to live in a hideous modern bungalow in the Cotswold village of Willowwood and to act as an unpaid Nanny to their children. Etta Bancroft- sweet, kind, still beautiful- adores racing and harbours a crush on one of its starts, the handsome high-handed owner-trainer Rupert Campbell-Black. It's my opinion that Cooper has lost it - she's lost her magic touch and her natural story-telling ability. Alas, squaring Jilly isn't all reward--there are even more characters and even more shifting and sorting of trysts, romantic and otherwise. I picked this one up for fun over Christmas and never have I laughed so much (except maybe at Lula in Janet Evanovichs Stephanie Plum series of books!

I absolutely loved this book and it's increased my desire to go back to the days of Riders and Rivals and find out how it all began.Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. When her bullying husband dies, Etta's selfish, ambitious children drag her from her lovely Dorset home to live in a hideous modern bungalow in the Cotswold village of Willowwood. All of them have simply brilliant characters (in fact, it is often easier to tell apart the animals than the humans) and it was the sad moments involving the horses that had me close to tears! Not only am I enjoying the book itself, but the memories of my friend Miranda and I reading “Riders”, Rivals et al side by side on her parents’ lawn many years ago have come flooding back, and makes enjoying this new book all the more special.

Her neighbour, powerful tycoon and ex-footballer Valent Edwards, has bought the big house next door.Sometimes we need a little fictional emotional rollercoaster so we can stay relatively normal in our real day to day lives. Can she be the first mare in over fifty years, and Amber the first woman ever, to win this mighty race? Rude of me to list this as a negative since I knew that going in, but I have never read her before and wasn't quite sure of her reputation. As usual though, the story romps along through highs and lows, with lots of relevant detail about the horse-racing world, plus some bonkers goings-on that only Jilly Cooper can pull off.

was full of a lot of waffle, mostly perhaps because there were far too many characters and so to give them all a mention throughout the book just seemed to fill it up without really telling the story.Etta Bancroft – sweet, kind, still beautiful – adores racing and harbours a crush on one of its stars, the handsome high-handed owner-trainer Rupert Campbell-Black. Also, the description inside the sleeve tells you EVERYTHING that happens up until about 650 pages in, so that was, rather, a suspense killer.