meh...this book was OK. Overall, very light and quick to read. The book does not try to take itself too seriously, although some of the topics presented could be. Entertaining, but don't rush out to buy it unless you REALLY want to.

First half was horsey and interesting, then the plot got odd. Thus only 3 stars. The author writes well.

Enjoyable read but very forgettable

This novel was fun and gave a reader a brief inside look into the life of a working horse farm and the hierarchies that are found therein.
To begin with I thought that the obsession of "true" horse people was portrayed well, the "caste system" between owner, rider, handlers, grooms, students was also done well. What was missing from the mix that is found in reality is the backstabbing gossip and overriding competitive spirit of show riders. The same people who have civilized cocktails together in the evening are praying for each other to be thrown off a horse during daily events.
It was worth the time even if the book "jumps the shark" on a subplot.

This is a fun, light beach-reading type of book. I love the author's writing style and the tongue-in-cheek humor of the main character.

I guess I'm just really fussy with horse books but I can never find a decent one!
The 'witty dialouge' was just too witty, noone talks like that! And it was a little annoying, and things that happen are extremely unrealistic. I found it hard to lose myself in the book and instead was annoyed at the farfetchedness.
However, kudos for coming up with horse descriptions that aren't all 'majestic' and 'noble' and recognsiing horses have personalities and different characteristics.

A fun read about a woman's mid-life issues. Will only work for those of you who love horses. Great humorous adult observations. Definitely kept the novel from feeling like horsey porn for teenage horse-obsessed girls.

Just-for-fun chick lit isn't usually my style, but I chuckled through HORSEPLAY and thought cheerfully that my chances of ever being a dressage working student again are ZERO, NILCH, NONE. Singer is at first generous to her heroine, giving her such interesting niceties as days off, and time and energy to go on dates, but reality strikes and pretty soon she's working the 13 hour days, seven day workweeks that I remember from my working student days. The wealthy characters which populate the unknown section of North Carolina seem over-the-top to me, but hey, Singer's the former Chronicle of the Horse writer, so she should know who goes to USEF charities.

For the horsey set: read it!

About horses. She leaves her cheating husband, her teaching job and takes a job as a groom in an elite stable. She learns for the 3 other women working there.

I should start out by saying I'm not really a horse-person, and maybe you need to be to really engage with this book.

I found parts of this book really bizzare. Extreme things would happen, like cults, murder and beastiality for example... and be brushed over as a humourous anecdotes?

I found one chapter really disturbing. A man falls asleep intoxicated in his girlfriends bed and three females (his girlfriend asleep on the couch) try to unclothe him to look at his genitals, thankfully he wakes up before they can, but mistaking them for an intruder lets of a shot into darkness?! Imagine if the sexes were reversed however!

They book didn't really offer any sense of closure to some of the plot lines, such as the relationship between Lenni and Jillian just sort of falling apart and never healing.

The whole Speed, cult thing was just weird. I kept thinking more would come of it, but nope! I also found Judy and.nicks relationship a bit unbelievable. He was hardly mentioned and then suddenly she loves him and he's her happy ever after? Ok.

I did like the running humour between the four main ladies. I like dry, sarcastic humour, so this hit the mark. I just found the entire book lacked an overarching plot and was more of a collection of anecdotes than a full story.

An ok read.

I think I had this one built up to be something very akin to Jilly Cooper's Riders and Rivals, so a little disappointed.

It was simply ok - nothing I'd recommend to others or that I'd read again.

It was humerous in places, absurd in others, there wasn't a lot about horses really.

The ending wrapped everything up nicely - too nicely?

I read Horseplay with the hope as a genre follow-up to Jilly Copper's Rivals and Riders books. While it did fill the bill in some sense, it was too short and to feminist. The dialog is witty but can get wearing at times. Her humorous situations are more outlandish and seem kind of forced. Most of the men in the book are jerks.

Judy decides she has had enough of her two-timing husband and leaves him and her job to work on a horse farm. The horse farm is for expense high-end horses used for show-jumping and Olympic level riders. The farm is also run by all women.

The characters besides the main character are interesting but we don't get much insight into them. The book doesn't seem intersted in getting too deep into characters to keep the story light and fluffy. This was a fun, quick read but less than satisfying in the end (at least for me).