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Deeply enjoyable trash, in the mode of Valley of the Dolls or The Best of Everything or The Group. (Spock: "Ah, the giants.") Full of terrible people being terrible, gross period-typical attitudes, more eating disorders than you can swallow, and also a lot of annoying POV-hopping. That said -- and despite the fact that this is somehow 900 pages long -- I was pretty consistently captivated. The writing is breezy, and Cooper takes more care with character development than I would have thought. Plus the show jumping scenes are genuinely exciting -- I got so into it I ended up watching some competition highlights on YouTube.

The one thing that would prevent me from recommending this book as pure trash fun to anyone in the mood is that, about 3/4ths of the way through, there's a gang rape scene. Neither the author nor the characters seem to fully recognize it as such -- it's painted as bad, but not that bad. To modern/my sensibilities, it was shocking and horrific, and I had to take an extended break afterward. Yet, the characters' (non)reactions unfortunately do feel in keeping with the way they've been presented in the previous 600 or so pages. Oof.

A fascinating, if occasionally repellant, product of its time.