Sixty-six Star Street, Dublin, is no ordinary apartment building. It is home to one 40-year-old music publicist, Katie, who's growing tired of waiting for her workaholic boyfriend, Conall, to commit; two melancholic Polish IT workers, Jan and Andrei, and their spiky taxi-driver flatmate, Lydia; one stolidly married couple, Maeve and Matt, with a penchant for biscuits and TV DIY shows; and one 88-year-old widow, Jemima, and her foster son Fionn, a celebrity gardener. Watching over the building's motley inhabitants – and engineering the tangled relationships between them – is a shadowy spirit whose intentions may just be malevolent. The Brightest Star in the Sky (Michael Joseph, £18.99), Marian Keyes's 10th novel, is more ambitious than her previous bestsellers, and its cod-mysticism could prove off-putting for some. But Keyes skilfully draws out the tension, maintaining her keen eye for detail and characteristic charm.
Competing with Keyes's heels in the magic-realism stakes comes fellow Irish novelist Cecelia Ahern. Her seventh novel, The Book of Tomorrow (HarperCollins, £14.99), concerns a mysterious enchanted diary discovered in a mobile library by the spoilt 16-year-old Tamara Goodwin, transplanted to her uncle's remote village in the wake of her father's death. In accordance with her own cloying blurb ("Cecilia: making the everyday magical"), Ahern provides magic in spades – but not enough to distract from her clunky writing, cardboard cut-out characters, and unconvincing, sub-fairytale plot.
Fairytale is used to better effect in Adele Parks's latest book, Love Lies (Michael Joseph, £6.99). Florist Fern Dickson embarks on a whirlwind romance with handsome Robbie Williams-esque popstar Scottie Taylor, after a chance meeting backstage at his sellout Wembley gig. Initially, it all feels a bit too much like wish-fulfilment for every screaming boy-band fan – and Fern's unbridled lust for her famous fiance verges on the toe-curling. But Parks administers a welcome dose of realism, as the winningly hapless Fern uncovers the rotten underside of fame.
Tansy Harris, the protagonist of The Life You Want (Headline Review, £6.99) – the latest instalment in Emily Barr's rather darker, off-kilter strain of travel-focused chick-lit – is also pursuing a dream. Formerly a carefree, get-up-and-go world traveller (her escapades were detailed in Barr's debut novel, Backpack), Tansy is now a wife and mother of two, sousing her boredom in alcohol and dreaming about moving to India. When the family refuse to go, she takes off alone to her friend's ashram in Pondicherry, where back-breaking yoga sessions and tedious communal meditation rapidly segue into something more sinister. The book's none-too-dramatic plot twist is predictable from its early chapters, making Tansy seem naive to the point of stupidity. But Barr's fluid, assured descriptions of India – informed, no doubt, by her background in travel writing – afford a vivid and convincing sense of place.
French Kissing (Penguin, £7.99) is the debut novel from Catherine Sanderson, British expat and erstwhile blogger who detailed the vicissitudes of life as a single mother in Paris – and earned herself the sack and a £450,000 book deal. Her first exercise in fiction feels more rooted in fact than imagination: the protagonist is, you guessed it, a thirtysomething Paris-based single mother and internet addict. But rather than keep a blog, Sally has joined a French dating site, through which she arranges to meet a succession of suitable and less-than-suitable prospective partners. Sanderson's minute descriptions of Paris streets, cafes and metro stations make the book feel more like a city-guide than a novel. But her palpable love for her adopted city – and its own perennial romantic appeal – carry the reader through, and could prompt a mass exodus of single British women across the channel, seeking their own shot at l'amour and a bijou apartment in Belleville. Parisians, you have been warned.
