I started Jilly Cooper's famous series with little knowledge of the story other than it involves show jumping and romance. I mainly read it because of the new Rivals show on Disney+ and despite it being a hell of a long book, I got through the audiobook pretty quickly.

Well. It's definitely a book of its time. Published in 1985, it's full of women who only want to meet men and have babies whilst being knowingly cheated on by morally screwed rich men. The constant homophobic slurs, animal abuse, cheating and references to weight, losing weight and characters describing women in terms of weight rather than personality soon got very old. None of the men were as attractive as they were meant to be because they were all so unlikeable.

This said, it was definitely a decent break from a series of heavy reads and lovely to read something that involved horses (even if they weren't really the point of the story).

Will I watch the series? Definitely. I mean, David Tennant's in it. Would I read the next book? Probably not. There were parts I really disliked and... I can't say there was a part that I loved. It became SUCH a slog towards the end too.

Only ⭐⭐ from me. It would have been one star but the horses saved it.