Prospect Park West is fun escapism at its best -- like reading a gossip column or tabloid magazine.

Amy Sohn's new novel follows four thirtysomething mothers whose paths intersect in Brooklyn's yuppie, fashionable Park Slope neighborhood. Readers find out what happens behind closed doors -- and the revelation is quite a soap opera.

Rebecca, unfulfilled in marriage and motherhood, is looking for a lover.

Lizzie is a former lesbian who is now in an interracial marriage. She lusts after Rebecca. Karen is a social climber obsessed with buying a co-op apartment and determined to get her overprotected toddler son into a good public school.

Narcissistic Melora is an Oscar-winning actress with a pill habit.

Though it's fun to see the women meet up in various ways, the way in which that occurs can be really over the top.

Karen is obsessed with Melora and her seemingly perfect life. What happens next could be the plot for a TV movie.

Prospect Park West is filled with celebrity name-dropping: Melora gets into a fight with Kate Hudson at a movie premiere after-party, and Lucy Liu breaks it up.

Melora sees Maggie Gyllenhaal at the food co-op. And so on.

There are also a number of subplots and short chapters written about minor characters that will remind readers of the beginning of each episode of television's Desperate Housewives . These snippets, however, only slow the plot.

Prospect Park West may be superficial and sensational, but that doesn't mean it's not a good time. If you're looking for an easy read, this is the book for you.