Introducing a wealth of characters and a menagerie of animals, some old and some new, this is a splendid waltz down memory lane. It's like Jilly is running out of ideas for characters in her books, so just taking the old ones and giving them new names and voila! is another glorious read and whilst I wasn't expecting much from an author who could have just cashed in on the notoriety of the series, I was impressed. 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. I mentioned this on the other thread - I'm sure the ages are all messed up, Rupert has to be more than 57.

The national /racial /xenophobic stereotypes are getting ever more cringe worthy and if you're female you've still got to loose weight to get your man. Even those fans of subtlety might be disappointed only by how much they enjoy the whole mad confection. 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. Disappointed in some of the characters actions, didn’t seem to jive with the overall development over the course of the series. 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.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. As the action builds lives hang in the balance and Leading Sire suddenly isn't so important after all.

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. It's still a good book and nice to revisit old friends even if it's briefly but hope they don't deteriorate further. And even the ones who are main characters and who are somewhat developed—aren't really very likeable. Not too impressed with Rupert sleeping around with such abandon after years of unquestioned fidelity to Taggie, also not impressed with Taggie turning into such a doormat domestic slave. There were snatches of dialogue that were extremely stilted and I don't know if Cooper thinks her readers have lost their attention span but when she told me Sheik Mohammed was the ruler of Dubai three time in three paragraphs I was starting to wonder if she was struggling to hit her word count.I also think that Jilly's extreme cleverness and powers of observation have outed themselves surreptitiously in the plot, if not the gush. I know Jilly's getting older but someone should have pointed things out to her so she could have corrected it. But appalling editing, if indeed there was any (when Jump came out I bought it immediately and noticed that Bas Baddingham - a major character in Rivals - had been referred to as Bas Baddington! After Score, I stopped loving Jilly's books because there wasn't enough of RCB - But, as the cover promised, Mount is! 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.

Rupert Campbell-Black takes centre stage once more, this time in the cut-throat world of flat racing. I did suspect that there had been so gentle age massaging with regards to Rupert approaching sixty and his grandson, Young Eddie, aged twenty-three, but who cares if a few years have been lost along the way? Oh, really, who cares: there are doggies and horsies in it, and poor old Taggie stuck in the kitchen for 900 years as usual; wonderful parties, like Cosmo Rannaldini’s chess ball, where everyone turns up as a “porn”. Rupert is now breeding Thoroughbred race horses and it gives you a good picture of racing behind the scenes. The fort at home is held by Gav, fancied by every stable lass but damaged by alcoholism and a vile wife.He is generally abusive in tone to the women he is sleeping with, has slept with, or wants to sleep with, but is willing to say "I love you" post coitus with one such fling. There are innuendos and outright sexual comments that sprint across the line of acceptable conduct, circuit the planet to cross the line again, then draw penis emojis on that line.

I so appreciate Cooper's writing what I believe is the end of the Rutshire Chronicles, which concluded on a sweetly reflective note.Jilly Cooper has a gift for creating memorable characters and she even manages to make the animals in her stories into characters. Wonderful to re encounter characters from previous books and fall in love with them again, I was disappointed when I got to the last page.