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

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I won't not-recommend this novel, but if you're going to read it then all I'll say is prepare to be rather bored for a while. 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. I felt like I really got to know the characters well and I really cared about what happened to them. Only to be surprised and let down by the sudden and out-of-tone scenes in the middle of the book, featuring drunken threesomes/foursomes, and then disgusted at the lightly-portrayed rape of an underage character, and the complete lack of depth and resolution to it throughout the entire rest of the book.

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. 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. 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!Can she be the first mare in thirty years, and Amber the first woman ever, to conquer this mighty race?

The rest of the novel focuses on the horse’s success on the training circuit and how the people in the syndicate interact with her. Etta’s life changes when, in the snow in nearby woods, she finds a horribly mutilated filly, which she names Mrs Wilkinson and nurses back to health. Also, the description inside the sleeve tells you EVERYTHING that happens up until about 650 pages in, so that was, rather, a suspense killer. That said, the real love story, between Etta and the unvarnishable Valent, falters tentatively along in a deeply endearing way and is all the more appealing set against the frantic jodhpur-ripping that's taking place elsewhere.After that, the rest of the book is exciting, and raunchy, and thrilling, just like dear Jilly is supposed to be. It's long, complex and tremendous fun featuring a few recurring favourites such as Rupert Campbell-Black. After a nail-biting court case, Mrs Wilkinson is awarded to Etta, thus ensuring the lasting and vengeful enmity of her evil former trainer and owner. 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. In this through-the-looking-glass version of England, toffs are either arrogant and gorgeous or chinless and sweet; virile working-class men who don't deny their roots are rough diamonds oozing sex appeal; but affectation of any kind is an instant clue that a character is Up To No Good.

It makes me so cross in a time when so many talented authors are struggling to get published that this utter horse-manure should make it onto the shelf and that we, trusting Cooper's previous record, should pay good money for it. Jilly’s descriptions of the glorious Cotswold countryside are some of the most lyrical ever written and her comedies of manners rival Nancy Mitford, if not Jane Austen.Can she be the first mare in over fifty years, and Amber the first woman ever, to win this mighty race?