Cruising

Day (Crazy Love) follows the tribulations of four stressed-out female friends from Atlanta who take a two-week Caribbean cruise and, to complement the sweet seaboard life (and keep their minds off their problems back ashore), compete to see who can have the most sex (a ""dick hunt,"" they call it). Madison DuPree, the wildest of the quartet, copes with the recent bombshell that Lucius, her freeloading and untrustworthy father, is not really her father. Blair Ricci, mother of three, discovers her husband has been cheating on her with a young waitress. Lauren Hobson, the vice president of a Fortune 500 public relations firm, has trouble keeping up with her job, her busy husband and her 12-year-old twins. Born-again virgin LaShawn Greene, never without a Bible, questions her celibacy after discovering her fiancé, Calvin, knocking bondage boots with neighbor Rita. Day has trouble maintaining her varied cast, and Lauren and Blair are half-sketched compared to LaShawn and Madison. And though the prose is swift, it has its saccharine moments. African-American women's fiction with a light touch, Day's novel will jerk tears from the right reader.(Sept.)