The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. C.B and his family, it was like a reunion with old friends, lovely to see how their lives had developed, whether Rupert had remained a faithful husband to Taggie or whether he'd got up to his old tricks. For regular readers of Cooper's novels I am sure that many characters played major roles in previous books in the series.

It also implied her marriage wasn't that brilliant and I wonder if she therefore just couldn't let Rupert and Taggie live happily ever after - or without him shagging the vile Gala. Rupert still struts around like he is cock of the walk, but heir apparent is his downright filthy grandson, Young Eddie, and my sights are firmly set of the "well rode and will read" shy trainer, Gavin Tatton! But the fact that there isn’t much of a plot doesn’t really matter, because that’s not what Jilly is about.I would also recommend reading The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous just because it's so lovely, and gives you background to the Rannaldini stuff. The competition to win the Leading Sire award lasted the entire book, and had lots of unexpected twists and turns. Rupert is back - and thanks to some apparent age massaging (the dates don't seem to be canon any more, so just try to overlook this - Young Eddie's age is a particular issue) Rupert is still a flawlessly gorgeous romantic hero, virile and beautiful, in his late fifties. What I do have a problem with is that we are supposed to consider this a happy ending, with a literal tribute to Rupert at the end.

This might have been something JC could get away with in the early 90s but not now, it’s not a funny ‘look what you used to be able to get away with saying’ when it’s published in 2016. They are the sort of books that you want to get to the end of to find out what happens but you don't because you don't want to leave that world and its inhabitants behind. All the usual components were present, but they didn't tie into a particularly cohesive novel, and it felt rather as though Cooper was going through the motions to deliver the novel. A difficult mixture of barbed and hilarious class observations, a naturally warm writing style and a massive soppy heart that always sides with the underdog makes Cooper frankly irresistible, and Mount is no different.I often find lengthy books overfacing but not Jilly's, I could have gone on reading, except of course I wanted to know the outcome!

Yet such responses are not miles off book after book of men falling over themselves when faced with an otherworldly female whose grace tends only to be matched by their silence. Never been particularly in love with the horse racing side of it; unlike others I still really enjoyed the art/music/film/school etc books which have followed since Polo so the fact this was a new racing book was neither hear nor there for me. As a footnote, I've also got the audio and it's the first one that's got the characters voices right - Jump and Wicked have made Taggie upper class English when she's Irish. As an animal lover I really appreciated that Cooper spends almost as much time developing the horses and dogs as she does the people.Our lead character Rupert is coming up to the age of 60, but every woman with a heartbeat still wants to have sex with him as per the earlier books when he was younger. No, Gala is not a very sympathetic character and the complete about turn of love life at the end of the book in the space of a page was a bit of a shocker and deeply unlikely. The Blacks’ is a frequently used phrase and then softened by highlighting the fact that Rupert and Taggie adopted black children. Consider, for example, her cheerful disregard for the rules of exposition-dumping: “Did you know that Gala’s hero Charles II was one of the few kings that ever rode a winner at Newmarket, and that the Rowley Mile, the demanding undulating course over which both the 2,000 and 1,000 Guineas are run, was named after him, or rather after “old Rowley”, Charles II’s favourite hack who later became a prepotent sire like himself? We all learned so much from her: that the correct amount of perfume to wear is roughly half a bottle, so you trail it like a ship’s wake.

The fort at home is held by Gav, fancied by every stable lass but damaged by alcoholism and a vile wife. The human characters are very realistic with all their flaws and strengths, and the animals in the story are almost human in their personalities. They are long and complex with lots of characters with all the books in the series having characters from earlier books. Even those fans of subtlety might be disappointed only by how much they enjoy the whole mad confection.The wonders of the last book I read with Rupert in was that he fell for Taggie and became a reformed man. When Gala switches to yard work, a handsome allegedly gay South African man takes over as carer but seems more interested in caring for Taggie. I'm hoping the old boy is retired now, and will likely only revisit the original trilogy in the future.