Rivals by Jilly Cooper

Being Bookish · Jan 8, 2023 · 31m

In the 1980s, there was nothing like a good old-fashioned bonkbuster to brighten up your bookcases. With their somewhat stylised but garish covers that declared them to be the sort of book you would probably blush when telling your granny about.

As well as the handsome but rakish main characters, they sold in their hundreds of thousands. Jilly Cooper was the Queen of Bonkbusters, famous for the heartless but too-beautiful-to-exist Rupert Campbell-Black who broke hearts all over the world.

Rivals was released at the tail-end of the 1980s (1988), but everything about it from the cover to the…