Tackle!: Let the sabotage and scandals begin in the new instant Sunday Times bestseller

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It was raunchy, funny, sexy, and clever, all the things I love about Jilly Cooper’s novels, and I sincerely hope she has one more novel in her. Needless to say, Searston won’t struggle for long once Campbell-Black is in charge: up the tables they rise, eventually bagging themselves a place in the Premier League, and thus the opportunity to play in the Champions League against, er, Union Beethoven (a German side, natch). There were a couple of players I really took to my heart like Griffy who has a nightmare wife and the young and naive Wifie. I had known nothing about horses or riding, but was riveted to every page of those books as there was so much life going on around the riders. Bianca, his adopted daughter, is married to a star striker, Feral Jackson, who’s playing for an Australian side when the book begins.

And the difficulty in picking a football team for a subject is that there are a lot of players transferring in and out so you don’t get to truly know them in the way you do with the spectacular heroes and villains of the past (e. As Searston's new owner, he won't stand for anything less than victory in the Premier League, despite the odds being stacked against him. I'm not a huge lover of football, and this awful utter tosh did nothing to improve my chances of ever doing so. This time set in the world of football, it brings back a slew old characters – notably Rupert Campbell-Black – from former stories.I was only fourteen at the time and now, thirty five years later I am still drawn to this charming character and all his antics, so as soon as Tackle!

With the help of the club’s ravishing and adorable secretary, Tember West, and his sassy Press Officer, Dora Belvedon, he becomes increasingly fond of his riotous mix of players, despite bawling them out whenever they face defeat. She has been awarded honorary doctorates by the Universities of Gloucestershire and Anglia Ruskin, and won the inaugural Comedy Women in Print lifetime achievement award in 2019. This is a whole new ball game (pardon the pun) for Rupert and opens up so many cliche’s and opprtunities for Jilly Cooper to play with the and they make this book such a fun and fabulous read. He was an American polo player who liked to quote Robert Frost and existed in a book published in 1992.Or for a quicker introduction, her 1970s novels (each titled with the respective heroine’s name) which are now almost historic romance in a wonderfully retro way. I could almost imagine that possibly her ideas were in the book, but written by someone else to assist at some points. To use words Cooper would doubtless scorn at as PC abominations (she has said she misses wolf whistling and that modern men are “always crying” and “growing beards”), many of her heroes and plots are 'problematic' and possibly 'triggering' for today’s audiences. If it hadn't been the first book of this year's reading challenge, I probably wouldn't have bothered finishing it.

There is plenty of drama, with business and personal rivalries, betrayals, affairs, broken hearts both romantic and profesional but there is also lots of fun, my favourite bring actor Paris Alverston teaching the football team how to dive and limp convincingly; if you watch football this will resonate with you. has its usual plethora of dastardly devils and bullying bastards, but in Cooper’s world she usually ensures they ultimately lose out to the devoted and darling ones, with kindness and empathy. Readers are quickly drawn into each of her the industries she describes (previously show jumping, polo, opera, horse racing, music etc) and can learn a lot about what goes on behind the glamour and the money. Nor do the rival local football team, their duplicitous chairman and their corrupt dealings make things easier - let the scandals, sabotage and seductions begin.

Some were rhyming ones , some meant to be amusing , the type of thing a 12 year old would find hilarious.