More sex, less horses but still British. Review on Rivals - Jilly Cooper

This is the second of Jilly Cooper’s Rupert Campbell-Black series and in my opinion is one of the best of the series. At the beginning of this book we see Rupert Campbell-Back divorced from his first wife and work as a local MP and holding the position of Minster for Sport.

Enter Anthony ‘Tony’ Baddingham who is the director of Corinium TV and who runs the local independent television station. He is essentially a bastar-d as far as his work and women are concerned. He hires Cameron Cook a young, beautiful, hotshot producer from New York to develop programs for his station he also starts developing a relationship with her.

Tony has also hired Declan O’Hara who is a hot shot Irish writer and interviewer. Declan moves from London into the area with his family which includes his glamorous wife Maud and his saint of a daughter Taggie a young beauty who is profoundly dyslexic but an absolutely wonderful Cook. The arrival causes the temperature of the small town of Cotchester to rise as everyone looks forward to having these interesting and famous individuals within their midst.

Declan O’Hara detests the working practices of Tony and when Corinium’s contract comes up for renewal decides to form a rival consortium with the help of Rupert, Bas Baddingham (Tony’s illegitimate brother and the second worst rake in England), and several other local people in order to oust Corinium and make in what their terms is a better brand of television.

The bulk of the book is taken up with the war between the two groups and Jilly has adeptly described the process by which independent television stations work and the process that they under go to keep making programmes. Like her other books there are also small sub-plots running through the book involving some of minor characters including a Romeo and Juliet scenario between two of them.

The rest of the book shows the reformation of Rupert the rake when he bites the proverbial Cupids arrow and falls in love with Taggie O’Hara but will he finally get her well for that you will have to read the rest of the book.

There are fewer horses and dogs in this story then any of the other ones although they do feature once in a while. Like her other books there are a large number of sub-characters but since Jilly is Jilly she is very adept at introducing each one and it is easy to keep track of who every one is. There is a lot of humour in the books and some of the scenarios are very amusing indeed.

The book also brings back some of the characters from Riders such as Billy Lloyd Fox and a few others which is nice to see. As usual this book too is set in the 1980s and is set a couple of years before the end of Riders and so there are mentions of the plot line of Riders in Rivals but you can read the two books independently without worrying particularly. In fact I read them well out of sequence depending on when I got them in the Library and feel I lost very little by reading them out of sequence.

I like the book because it has a nice storyline that keeps you entertained. It is very easy to get engrossed in the storyline and you feel that you know all the characters by the end of it. It is quite a long book and as such it is a good book to take on your holidays and for long plane journeys. Most of her books are easily available from the bookshops at most airports. It is one that if you like these kind of books is definitely worth a read.