Missing the mark by trying too hard

Ash O'Halloran is nearly 30, blond, beautiful and a chef. My Favourite Goodbye refers to this culinary goddess's penchant for lovin' and leavin' 'em. The trouble is that Sheila O'Flanagan's central character is also deadly-dull, prone to tiresome dialogue and boringly neurotic. Nobody reads women's blockbuster fiction for life's essential truths, but a good blockbuster must be a pacey page-turner with a likeable character or two. O'Flanagan really does test the reader's credulousness with the deeply humourless Ash's ability to snap up Dublin's most eligible bachelors. To spice up the girl-getsboy plot, she has layered in a tricky family background for Ash - a hippy mother who dies when she is young and a bitter married-with-children cousin who resents her independent lifestyle.

The author's own background is in finance - she worked in banking and treasury management before becoming a bestselling author - and the financial world figures large in the book. Several of her characters work in finance - even Ash dabbles in stocks and shares. This certainly gives the book an edge and there are some nice scenes set in Temple Bar, Italy and New York. However, the acid test for a blockbuster - My Favourite Goodbye weighs in at 406 pages - is whether it is worth packing alongside the Ambre Solaire and the sarong. Usually O'Flanagan's fiction is a safe bet for holiday reading; her first book, Suddenly Single, sold over a quarter of a million copies but this - her sixth book in four years - misses the mark.

Mary Moloney

Dancing With Mules. By Morag Prunty. Pan. 480pp, £5.99 in UK

This isn't a bad novel. In fact, it's pretty good - in parts. The problem is it tries too hard. Everything is oh, so Brown Thomas-ish, designer this, Foxrock that . . . It's meant to be funny, to send up what passes for streetcred, only caricature takes over and it's easy to get lost in the chic angst of the moment. Lorna, Gloria and Sandy all want to meet billionaire Mr Big who has advertised to marry an Irish colleen. His soul sprouts, we're told, "a lush carpet of greenest, moistest, freshest, most comforting green, green grass of home." Indeed. Lorna is a PR goddess for whom the Revenue Commissioners are calling time's up. Sandy is stuck in a career groove and wants to make her name as a "serious" journalist. Gloria is a hairdresser to the stars with an ex-husband taking her for every penny - in-between his romps with red-headed model, Flame. And Liam is Mr Big's PA with the absolute hots for one of the unhappy singletons. This is a romp with clever lines, choice antics, feelings swiped like credit cards. Indeed, gals galore are so desperate for the likely chance that you think maybe there is some point in this whole satire. The Celtic Tigress has indeed devoured herself . . . You can open almost any page and be entertained, but too many off-beat creatures have walk-on parts, the plot meanders - and, for this reader, finishing it became a task.