The filly charms everyone in the village, then tests reveal her to be a spectacularly well-bred racehorse.

what angered me the most is the foursome/rape scene involving a 15 year old girl which wasn't dealt with in any way, inappropriate isn't the word. There were times that just hiding in the bedroom closet or not answering the phone would have seemed a more effective mode of handling things than she applied. As for me I’m not giving up on Cooper, I’ll read the next novel in the series, I’m confident it will be as much fun as the other novels in the series and well worth the read. That's not to say, though, that Cooper has lost her near-magical ability to conjure up a world and populate it with people for whom you feel a deep affection.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. It's my opinion that Cooper has lost it - she's lost her magic touch and her natural story-telling ability. It was rough and ready at times; some subplots didn't work at all; and there were *far* too many characters (even for a Jilly book! It was still good fun, I was still rooting for our heroines and horses, and I still love Jilly Cooper.

For someone who is usually immersed in some form of crime fiction, coming up for air to read about outlandish billionaires, arrogant horse trainers and laughing at their antics is just what's needed to recharge the batteries occasionally. 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. If only Jilly Cooper would concentrate on fleshing out a scene, or something that has happened - it's so enjoyable when she does that and the rest of it is just crappy. A magnificent portrayal of how a beautiful young girl might become the first woman ever to win the Grand National. Mrs Wilkinson, as she's soon named, turns out to be a startlingly talented racehorse, and despite having lost an eye is soon gaily charging her way round Cheltenham and Aintree, the village syndicate who have invested in her careering drunkenly in her wake.

I'm sad to say I've tried to force my way onwards, hoping for a glimpse of RC-B but I'm abandoning it at less than 50% still disappointed. 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!

What I don't understand is why no one, not any of the many many people who care for her nor any authorities, investigate and prosecute the hideous crime. You get wrapped around the characters’ lives and are fully submerged for the duration of the book gasping for air amidst tears of sorrow and joy in the final pages. Sometimes we need a little fictional emotional rollercoaster so we can stay relatively normal in our real day to day lives.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. 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. For example, in The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous, we have the launch party, a kitchen visit, a school function, and a dinner party to impart information.

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! But one of those adults is a drop-dead gorgeous well-known actor and she quickly forgives him, and submits willingly to him, when he later turns on his famous charm.

I was going all right until I hit the two chapters where Etta and Dora walk around the village info dumping the cast of thousands to the reader. The filly charms everyone in the village, and whentests reveal her to be a spectacularly well-bred racehorse a village syndicate is formed to put the filly into training. It has taken me 3 months to read – simply because I wanted to stretch my reading time to as long as possible, because I didn’t want to finish reading the book. I don't know much about horse racing and horse owning syndicates but that didn't matter at all because everything that needed to be explained was covered.