The Infidelity Pact

Four L.A. moms in their mid-30s are bored with marriage and child-rearing. Over meals in trendy eateries, devious Victoria has reasons of her own to persuade Helen, Leelee and Eliza to invent a dangerous, rut-defying game: they will all have affairs over the course of a year; they will confide only in each other; husbands of the four are off limits. Karasyov (coauthor of Wolves in Chic Clothing ) gives a good sense of the stakes for each woman and works to give each a unique personality and background (Eliza has a magazine job; Helen's Korean-American; Victoria's mean and has a high-powered agent husband). But the four blur together, and flashes of inventive plotting flame out in an overheated ending. (June)