She seems to have toned down the raunchiness (or maybe I have just grown up alot) but there was still the same old naughty characters getting up to the same tricks as well as some fabulous new characters establishing themselves for a new generation of Jilly fans.

Only through sheer determination and constant complaining did I finish this diabolical excuse for a book! 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 and to act as an unpaid Nanny to their children. A magnificent portrayal of how a beautiful young girl might become the first woman ever to win the Grand National. I did read it all, but I'm not sure if I will read it again, although it will stay on the shelf with it's prequels for now. It's long, complex and tremendous fun featuring a few recurring favourites such as Rupert Campbell-Black.Mrs Wilkinson and Etta were a lovely central pairing and their story made me smile on many occasions. I felt fairly uncomfortable as well with some of the work that Jilly did involving Pakistanis and Al Qaeda (I will leave you to wonder how she encompassed this into the world of jump racing! Rude of me to list this as a negative since I knew that going in, but I have never read her before and wasn't quite sure of her reputation.

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. Still, when you're Jilly Cooper you can get away with everything :) I'll still read her books though. 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. I found the characters to be believable, there were many who could have turned into stereotyped clichés but Cooper kept them on the right side of convincing.Cooper usually creates characters whom the reader has great sympathy for no matter their behavior because Cooper gives her readers the complete back story. A village syndicate is formed to put the filly into training, consisting of a riotous mix of local characters, who set off to the races in a minibus clanking with bottles. 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. This is the sort of blissful silliness one looks for in a Jilly Cooper, and to have to pick it out from digressions on bombs and al-Qaida is annoying to say the least.