So we are now onto Polo which as you can see from my user name is a particular favourite of mine!
Polo brings back lots of characters from earlier books, as it runs over the same time period as Rivals (starting just after Riders). It also introduces lots of entertaining new characters - Ricky and Chessie France-Lynch, the Macleods, the Aldertons.
I like getting to see events from Rivals from a different point of view. You also get Rupert and Taggie's wedding in this book (which appears to take place about 5 minutes after he proposed at the end of Rivals - how do they organise weddings so quickly in Cooper world?).
However, what's annoying is that Jilly has got her dates wrong in this book, and things happen about 2 years before they happened in Rivals - for example if you work through the timeline in Rivals, Rupert and Taggie's wedding is Xmas 1987. However, if you work through the dates in Polo, the wedding is Xmas 1985. Because of this disparity with dates, Rupert's age doesn't tie up - at a specific event in the past which I won't mention because it is a spoiler, he was apparently 18 which would make him born 1947 - but this doesn't tie up with ages quoted in Riders which work out to him being born in 1947.
Anyway, putting all that aside (which won't annoy people less geeky than me anyway) this is a great book, good characters and the usual sex and horses that make up a typical Cooper!
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Jilly Cooper Book Club - Polo
ChessieFL · 25/05/2016 18:42
Oh god, I didn't realise we were up to Polo!
This was my first Jilly Cooper, and I fell absolutely head over heels not just with Jilly's books, but with Ricky France-Lynch. I think the fact he killed his son while drink driving passed me by the first time 
.
It's a great one for rereading because the characters and your opinions change so much every time you read it. I wanted to be Perdita when I was younger; then I thought she was an absolute bitch and didn't deserve anyone, let alone the Lovely Luke; now I'm older, it's so obvious how much her childhood affected her and she just wants someone to respect her and care for her. I like to think that she is a character who becomes good in the end, with a decent family behind her and the love of a good man.
The liking for underage girls doesn't improve much in this book either, does it?!
Still - Ricky, Ricky, be still my beating heart. I even forgive the high-handed way he announces his love at the end of the book, without really asking her if she likes him too.
What else is great? How wonderfully and thoroughly selfish Chessie is, the Carlisle twins and their terrible puns and jokes, Red's make-up and blazers (I mean, that doesn't date well at all, does it?), and, most of all, the fact that suddenly polo is the kind of sport that gets front page headlines 
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