Mount!: The fast-paced, riotous new adventure from the Sunday Times bestselling author Jilly Cooper (Rutshire Chronicles Book 10)

It’s great to have another story featuring Rupert Campbell-Black, the original Rutshire headline maker! He’s such a character that you can’t help but love him despite all his antics and toxic masculinity. This book gets back to the horse racing, this time on the flat instead of in the show jumping arena. The plot and fascinating racing details kept me hooked and plenty of my favorite characters were in play to make it fun like Dora, Cosmo and even Baby Spinossisimo. Cooper always tells a great story that makes me want to move to England and hobnob with the elite!

Jilly Cooper is back! More importantly, Rupert Campbell-Black is back! After the disappointments of the last couple Jilly Cooper books, Mount is a delightful return to the fun of her earlier work.Rupert's dream is to have his beloved Thoroughbred stallion, Love Rat, declared leading sire. His main competition is the fiendish Cosmo Ranaldini and his horse, Roberto's Revenge. While he's flying all over the world to enter his horses in the richest races of the entire globe, things at home are being overseen by his stable manager Gav (who is of course a genius with horses but tormented in love), the nurse for his increasingly senile father Eddie, Gala (of course she is also a genius with horses AND a tormented widow) and a host of other characters (most of whom are geniuses with horses and unhappy in love). Notice a theme here? In the meantime, someone appears to be sabotaging Penscombe and the horses.The good: Rupert is in fine form, and is his usual hot-headed, passionate, annoying, self. Somehow you can't help but root for Rupert no matter how disgracefully he acts. If you are a horse lover, there are TONS of horse parts in this book (even more than Riders and Polo!). The competition to win the Leading Sire award lasted the entire book, and had lots of unexpected twists and turns. There was a subplot with a scare for Taggie, and lots of betrayals and misunderstandings.The bad: Many of the characters seem like newly named versions of previous characters. 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! New character. They also seem completely undeveloped, so it's really hard to like them. And even the ones who are main characters and who are somewhat developed—aren't really very likeable.****Spoiler alert!*** One of the prevailing themes of the books is Rupert's love for Taggie, and his faithfulness to her. In this book he cheats on her, and it seems so random. There is no believable reason, the person he sleeps with isn't likeable, there is no built up basis that makes the events understandable. It's like Jilly just threw it in there for excitement. ***Spoiler Alert over***Lastly, it's a bit annoying how we're supposed to still see Rupert as the sex god hottest man in the universe and how he doesn't age. Is he going to be 100 years old and still have this? It's getting a bit tired.In spite of the “bad”, this book is still a fun romp. It's not literature by any means, but it's exciting and engaging and a great read!!

While the sheer length of Cooper’s novels always intimidates me, once I get started, the storytelling takes over and they’re easy to finish. I’m not as infatuated with Rupert Campbell-Black as every female in the book is, but he’s entertaining. Cooper has always let him get away with anti-heroic actions and this book is no exception. The horses and their various animal companions were adorable. The races were exciting.

It's been a while since I read a new Jilly Cooper. I have read and re-read all the others ragged. I almost felt emotional as I started reading and the dear old characters were back with some new supremely interesting ones. Also glad to see that Rupert had not changed. No molly-coddling from Jilly on this one. You love him one minute and want to beat him to a pulp the next! The lives and loves of the new characters were riveting. Felt like I was giving welcome back hugs to Taggie, Dora, The Eddies, Tabitha, Bianca, Feral, Paris, Xav, Etta, Valent, Mrs. Wilkinson, Chisolm, Love Rat and on and on. There was also a bit of a whodunnit which was resolved quite satisfactorily. Also got to see the very best of human, and the very worst, especially with regard to the treatment of animals, and horses in particular. Could not wait for this one and cannot wait for the next one

An enjoyable Rupert Campbell-Black romp with plenty of 'mounting' and bonking.Oh yes,and a good dose of horses.Rupert is at his grumpiest ,whilst it is great to have a South African feature ( my home country) it is a pity he is such a lout.It amazes me that so much money is involved in this so- called "Sport of Kings".The fact that even my home town of Port Elizabeth in South Africa is mentioned added to an enjoyable read.

Jilly Cooper is always a fun and exciting read. Enter the world of her society. Sex, horses, dogs and beautiful people!

This was my least favourite Jilly Cooper book. I did laugh in places, but I had guessed about Jan pretty quickly so was just waiting for the “big reveal”. I also missed the more raunchy scenes that used to pepper her other books. This one was more slight innuendo, with a handful of “naughty bits”. I love Jilly Cooper and I’m hoping that Football might be the theme of her next book as hopefully will buy the shares:)

JILLY COOPER should be FAMOUS in the US!! She is legendary in England, Australia and New Zealand. Her hero, Rupert Campbell-Black, is every woman's fantasy. Ask your local libraries to stock her books, particularly MOUNT, POLO, RIDERS and THE MAN WHO MADE HUSBANDS JEALOUS...delightful and hysterically, laugh out loud, funny! Rule Britannia!

I have always been a big reader and after reading all of my books one day in my early teens and desperate for something new I found Riders and Rivals on my mum's book and I couldn't believe my luck. I had never read anything like it, reading these books was so comforting like a warm bath or enjoying a glass of wine in front of a fire but they were also full of humour and joy. I bought all other other early books and was such a huge fan of them, I could (and still can) read them again and again and they never got boring as I always found something new in them. I pre-ordered Pandora as I was so excited but it was a bit of a let down but not too bad. Then I pre-ordered Wicked hoping for better things but I was even more disappointed. When Jump and Mount came out I still read them as I was so hoping that Jilly might still surprise me with some of the old magic. But I hate to say that due to the poor nature of these books that I will not be bothering to read any more when they are published. I feel that Jilly is now just churning out any old rubbish that she can so that she can keep getting money. I recently tried to wade through Mount again as I read it only once the last time and I was afraid to say that I had to put it down after about 100 pages as I was so bored of the mammoth list of characters (and they all have a stupid nicknames as well) most of whom will probably only be mentioned once in the whole book. I can't believe that it is this boring, I never thought that I would be bored by Jilly Cooper. My other concern is how blase she is about sexual assaults. Do we recall the attempted rape of underage Trixie in Jump which was glossed over entirely afterwards? And what about the part in Mount where old Eddie sexually assaults his carer, Taggie and the female residents of a nursing home where he was going around putting his penis in their mouths. Am I the only one who thinks this would be a massive safeguarding issue? In a world where sexual assault is all too prevalent should be really be trivialising it and making it into a big joke? I don't think so Jilly.

All the old favourites are here - Rupert C-B, Taggie, Cosmo , and Isa Lovell, and even Helen and James Benson put in an appearance. . . Yet although it was a fun read, the book didn't really hit its stride, I felt, until about 40% of the way into the story. The first almost -half felt rather muddled, with so much going on, and so many characters, animals and action all over the place that it all felt a little vague and insubstantial, as though it didn't quite know where it wanted to go...However, once things settled down in the second half, it became if not quite 'classic' Jilly Cooper, at least a hugely enjoyable read.And the (SPOILER ALERT !) description of the fate of the horses during the kidnapping of Safety Car was really heartbreaking, to the point where my eyes were so full of tears that I couldn't carry on reading for a good 10 minutes. And to know that this horrible trade really does happen, and is still happening, is just ghastly.For simply highlighting this hideous trade alone, and bringing awareness of it to a wider audience, the book deserves another couple of stars.

We all knew if RCB ever had a mid life crisis, it would shake Penscombe to its roots and that's what happens in this delightful, fast paced offering from Jilly Cooper. I love the Rutshire chronicles and re-read them all in order again before delving into Mount! Some people have complained that there are too many characters to keep track, but if you're a long standing lover of this hell-raising set, you will be delighted to see cameos from many old friends, and eagle eyed fans of Pandora will know a picture's artist just from the line of detail that Jilly uses. It's these little, seemingly unassuming, details that really made Mount! such an enjoyable read for me, so many nods to previous characters and a small update on their storylines.As some people have mentioned, there are a few scenes in the book that do stray very close to the boundary line, even for JC, however, they are very much in tone with the characters would act and react. We may not find humour or approve of that situation, but that impressing your own morals on the story, not taking the story written in it's purpose.A thoroughly enjoyable read, although at times I wanted to bash Rupe around the head myself!

Oh how I wish I had read the reviews before I purchased this! Poor Jilly Cooper seems to be stuck in a time warp. I'm no spring chicken myself, having read all her books in the distant past, but the world moves on. Her characters used to be quite finely drawn but in this book they are shallow and anyone new to her books would get such a bad impression. The puns are plentiful and somewhat hackneyed and her sense of OTT drama seems to be magnified. What a shame as she has written some great reads in the past.

I read my first Jilly Cooper a very long time ago...things haven't changed. Every character is either gorgeous or ugly, saint or sinner, rich or skint. Everyone shags everyone else but hey that's ok because it's all just a laugh. The amount of brand-name dropping suggests a significant amount of product placement going on in the Cooper household. It's a lengthy beach read that would be better as a TV soap series with so many impossibly handsome heroes and so much heavy petting (lots of horses and dogs, that is...)