Temptation, by Dermot Bolger (Flamingo, £6.99 in UK)

The trouble with calling your novel Temptation is that the word itself is so loaded and full of promise that any storyline would have to work very hard indeed to deliver. In Dermot Bolger's book Alison Gill, wife and mother, appears to be going through a sort of midlife criseis even though she's only 39. Her husband, school principle principal Peadar, has his own troubles in a school extension that's going horribly wrong. And then there's Chris Conway, Alison's old flame, who is coming to terms with the death of his wife and children. The action takes place in an upmarket holiday hotel in the sunny south east where Alison is left alone with the children while her husband has to get back to Dublin. The very troubled Chris is in the same hotel. However, the characters lie flat on every page in this thinly plotted book. Little about what they say and do rings true to this reader's mind and Alison and Chris are so dreary that it's hard to care whether or not they succumb to any sort of temptation.