Jump!: Another joyful and dramatic romp from Jilly Cooper, the Sunday Times bestseller

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Crammed into every page too, like a traffic report where everyone is sitting what everyone is saying. I also know that I will be scooped up into a world where Jilly examines relationships, social considerations and class differences. She seems to have toned down the raunchiness (or maybe I have just grown up alot) but there was still the same old naughty characters getting up to the same tricks as well as some fabulous new characters establishing themselves for a new generation of Jilly fans. Slow to get started, huge info dumps, scenes and chapters that end in strange places, and a heroine who's pushed off the page by too many other characters sharing the stage. Jilly Cooper is not a subtle novellist--her plots are twisty, her characters larger than life--but she delivers page-turning, emotion-packed stories, perfect for a bit of self-indulgent reading when you really should be getting on with something else, but, oh, never mind.

Mrs Wilkinson and Etta were a lovely central pairing and their story made me smile on many occasions.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! The horse, named Mrs Wilkinson, forms a steadfast bond with Etta, and recovers to become a celebrated racehorse, competing in the biggest race of all, the Grand National at Aintree. 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. Alas, the story is not as much of a colossus as Rupert Campbell-Black is said to be in his character description.

Although I am not a horse person I enjoyed Cooper’s other novels but this one I found boring and hard to get through. She started her career as a journalist and wrote numerous works of non-fiction before writing several romance novels, the first of which appeared in 1975. I felt like I really got to know the characters well and I really cared about what happened to them.I felt fairly uncomfortable as well with some of the work that Jilly did involving Pakistanis and Al Qaeda (I will leave you to wonder how she encompassed this into the world of jump racing! 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. Just to say that as always there is a huge cast of characters, lots of temperamental animals (I love how we get to hear what they're thinking) and fabulous settings of rolling countryside and idyllic villages. It was still good fun, I was still rooting for our heroines and horses, and I still love Jilly Cooper.

Plenty of old favourites, like Rupert Campbell-Black, along with a whole new village of characters to fall in love with. The author of many number one bestselling novels, she lives in Gloucestershire with her husband Leo, her rescue greyhound Feather and her black cat Feral. Here, one of the worst offenders is Bonny Richards, a ravishing actress who talks of "closure" and "my life's journey" and makes her lover, Valent Edwards, take elocution lessons, shrieking at him "It's a hangover, not an 'angover, Valent.The characters are poor faded shades of the vibrant witty loveable rogues she created in her earlier works (Riders and Polo being the best examples of these).

Compounding the problems this novel focuses too much on the horse world, and not enough of what makes Cooper’s novels special, the relationships between her characters. I don’t think I could read two Rutshire books back to back, because I get so seriously emotionally involved. Mrs Wilkinson and Etta develop an unshakable bond, as the filly becomes a renowned racehorse and leads Etta into the world of syndicates, racing and controversy. Ridden by Rupert’s god daughter Amber Lloyd-Foxe, Mrs Wilkinson starts winning – and then bad things start happening. It's not that I didn't enjoy it when I was reading it and I did love the whimsical tale of rescuing a neglected filly and rehabilitating her to become a top racehorse, I mean who wouldn't really!

At her best, Jilly Cooper has a genius for combining soft-focus romance with the beady, pitiless social comedy of Jane Austen, or at least Nancy Mitford.