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After Score, I stopped loving Jilly's books because there wasn't enough of RCB - But, as the cover promised, Mount is! 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.
Everyone had aged - they don't have the same edge - and in the end, were considering how to shape their lives so they could enjoy more time with one another. Characters of foreign descent as thrown in willy nilly as if JC only put them there for political correctness. For regular readers of Cooper's novels I am sure that many characters played major roles in previous books in the series. Giving her cancer meant she didn't have to actually do anything - she never did learn to assert herself.I do not have a problem that he gets everything he wishes for in the end: success, the love of his wife, and a bit of fun with another woman who conveniently moves on. The blurb describes Mount as Cooper’s “raciest novel” but, drawing on my imaginary romantic writing expertise, I would suggest not opening with a prolonged horse mating scene, even if you think it would be enlivened by the presence of a former porn star. I was leaning more towards my love of the wonderful characters who I had fell in love with since my grandma first lent me The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous when I was 16. 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. That said, it's still peak daft Cooper: superlatives and bad puns galore, animals better characterized than half the humans, horses, parties, and everyone gets a new polo neck sweater that's just the right shade to set off their eyes.
A centuries old grudge about a horse race between two ancestors was just ridiculous and unbelievable. I can't help thinking that this would have been better as two books rather than this mad, too-busy rush of a story.Sure, Cooper is a product of a particular time period, but surely her editor could have remarked on the fact that writing out Chinese use of 'r' instead of 'l' in dialogue isn't poking fun, but is actually racist. A string of bad luck ruins Love Rat's chances one year but the next year suspicions mount that darker things are happening.
The 'chemistry' between him and Gala is non-existent, the sex is gross (I'll be attempting to wash "buttercunt" out of my mind for a good while) and no one really suffers as a result of the gross breech of trust except poor ol' Taggie…who suffers and suffers and suffers and then gets cancer FFS. Gala adores horses, and when she switches to working in the yard, her carer's job is taken by a devastatingly handsome South African man who claims to be gay but seems far keener on caring for the angelic Taggie.I also agree her nature writing is lovely and her older characters used to be flawed but they generally redeemed themselves in some way. Overall: this was more of a nostalgia read for me, taking me back to a series I enjoyed when I was younger - while it was similar to the previous novels it's not really to my tastes now but there's plenty of readers rating it highly. The wonders of the last book I read with Rupert in was that he fell for Taggie and became a reformed man. 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.
It's truly dreadful, could have been half the size if Jilly hadn't spent so much time summarising events and relationships from previous RCB novels. I actually think Jilly should just have killed Taggie off and let Rupert stew in his own guilt for the rest of his life.Usually Jilly is a master of writing animal characters that are as rounded as the humans and notable that she does this so well that when she kills one off you are left in tears - Sailor, Arthur and Tero are perfect examples.
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