Horse Play by Jo Carnegie

I love a good bonk buster when on holidays. And as I am on holiday I was pleased to see that I would get to review a book that was not going to require the use of too much grey matter! Billed as ‘The new SATC – Sex and the Countryside!’ by Heat magazine, I looked forward to an easy fun read.

Click here to buy from Amazon

The story covers the lives of families in Churchminster, a picturesque village in the Cotswolds. It encompasses, horses, wealth, family dynamics, with heroes and heroines who have break ups, accidents, fall in love, out of love and generally live at a fairly breakneck pace. This is one of a series of books about the village and its families, and you do not have to know anything about the other books to be able to enjoy this one. The ‘heroine’ is Kizzie who falls in love with the enigmatic Javier Hamilton-Scott. The book charts her journey through all the ups and downs of village life, learning to be a jockey and falling in love. Her story is intertwined with several other families, and the life of a racehorse come good (definitely shades of Jilly Cooper).

I read the book in 3 days, but it wasn’t an ‘unputdownable’ read. I don’t know why Jo Carnegie is so fascinated with the C word. By that I mean Christian names beginning with the letter ‘C’: Calypso, Caro, Camilla, Cheryl, and Clementine all of whom are major female players in this book. I never really sorted them all out and their relationship to each other – and perhaps that was my fault more than the authors as I probably read the book too fast. The other problem is that I am a Jilly Cooper fan and to be honest Jo Carnegies comes off a poor second best.

Having said that, this is a good light read with some really fun passages describing all too accurately the dilemmas that face people living in close-knit communities in the countryside where everything and everyone is everybody else’s business.

I would give this 3 glasses of wine.

Bitza



Click here to buy from Amazon