Snapped

In Brown’s latest, four New York friends find money doesn’t buy happiness and love doesn’t either, especially when it’s confused with lust. Latoya Blake’s a fashionista realtor who’s flamboyantly single and distrustful of men because of a horrific secret in her past. Dominique Storms has a successful music industry job and a lovely 13-year-old daughter, but she’s obsessed with an incarcerated man. Former model Camille Bingham is married to Frankie B., the trusted associate of a dying Manhattan crime lord, Doug Nobles, and she rightfully suspects her honey’s getting far too close to Doug’s daughter, Gillian, who’s poised to take over after her father dies and Baron, her dangerously out-of-control brother, is out of the way. Camille’s younger sister, Misa, yearns to be rich like her sis, but is a neglectful single mother of a three-year-old pursuing a relationship with the sadistic Baron. Brown makes these desperate women amazingly sympathetic even as they make foolish choices, and the same goes for Frankie B., despite his appalling mistreatment of Camille. It all adds up to some seriously twisted problems leading to some cliffhanging shockeroos that undoubtedly mean a sequel is on its way. (Jan.)