CHICK LIT

SARA LAWRENCE

MOUNT! by Jilly Cooper (Bantam £20)

THE most exciting words of 2016 were surely ‘Rupert Campbell-Black is back’, emblazoned across the front of Cooper’s latest sex-and-horses triumph. It’s sheer bliss to be reunited with some old favourites.

Here, Rupert is fast approaching 60 and mourning his best friend, Billy Lloyd-Foxe. But he is also obsessively focused on his prize stallion, Love Rat, trouncing bitter rival Cosmo Rannaldini’s horse in order to be named Global Leading Sire.

It’s warm, witty and wise, and I couldn’t have loved it more.

STRICTLY BETWEEN US by Jane Fallon (Penguin £7.99)

BEST friends since school, Tamsin and Michelle are inseparable even though Michelle is now married to Patrick, who works in Tamsin’s industry. When Tamsin hears disturbing rumours about Patrick, she is determined to find out the truth. She enlists her PA, Bea, to act as a honeytrap, reasoning that she can trust her with everything else, so why not this?

Meddling in other people’s affairs is, of course, bound to backfire . . .

I raced through this beautifully written, thoughtful and exciting story, alternately cringing and cheering as things veered farther off-piste.

THE WEEKENDS OF YOU AND ME by Fiona Walker (Sphere £7.99)

THIS has shades of David Nicholls’s One Day, in concept and in context, and I loved it. Walker focuses on protagonists Jo and Harry on their annual weekend away in rural Shropshire over a decade of their wartsand-all relationship.

We follow them from their initial meeting to dealing with the varying demands of children, careers and financial and domestic constraints, which lead to occasionally dramatic arguments about where they should live and whose work should take precedence.

Both are beautifully drawn, fully rounded and eminently believable characters, whose flaws serve only to make them more human.

It’s emotionally intelligent and brilliantly written.