It’s hard work having fun: Wives Like Us, by Plum Sykes, reviewed

Just when you thought the Cotswolds must have peaked as a fictional setting, a new rom-com from the author of Bergdorf Blondes floats like cherry blossom onto a chalk stream. Plum Sykes has chosen a rich (as in minted) target, and she is well-equipped to take aim. As a former contributing editor of American Vogue, she might be considered part of the trans-atlantic glossy posse, but at heart she’s still an Oxford-educated Sykes – with a certain diplomatic heritage. The family seat is the magnificent Sledmere in Yorkshire, which has its own blue-tiled Turkish Room. So Plum is not your common-or-garden mag hag. But she now lives in the ’wolds, and when it comes to the lifestyles of the UHNWs (ultra-high-net-worths) of Poshtershire, she knows. And she certainly can write.

The setting of Wives Like Us is ‘the country’ (which is how people like Sykes refer to anywhere outside London), and although sex and horses feature, we are far from Jilly Cooper’s Rutshire.