THE last few years have seen popular women's fiction mutate from the mere chronicling of single women and their efforts to find the holy grail of chick lit (the man). Women's fiction has capitalised on all saleable areas of the average woman's life, from novels on newlyweds to novels on parenting and babies; novels on fertility treatment and adoption to novels on yummy mummies (quickly followed by the anti-yummy mummy novels). Now we have divorces in Clare Dowling's latest My Fabulous Divorce. It had to happen sometime, I suppose.

Dowling is a young Irish author who initially came to public attention when she won an Express On Sundaywriting competition in 1998. This is her third novel and it is clear that Dowling has an adept touch for light and warm-hearted women's fiction.

The book opens with its protagonist, Jackie Ball, who runs a flower shop called Flower Power. Jackie has been seeing the hunky Dan for six months - he came into her life like a knight on shining armour when her car had broken down on the M50. When Dan proposes out of the blue, Jackie is delighted. There's just one snag. She's already married.

And so the fun begins. Jackie hasn't spoken to her writer husband Henry Hart since she walked out of the home they shared in London 18 months previously. All she left was a note saying goodbye and Henry, as much as the reader, is interested to find out exactly why she left in the first place.

Divorce proceedings are initiated with haste, but unfortunately for Jackie and Dan their divorce takes a little longer than anticipated, not least because Henry has decided to contest it. The ensuing correspondence brings out the worst in everybody, especially in Jackie's fiancé Dan, who is not entirely what meets the eye.

Dowling keeps the reader wondering exactly what it was that prompted Jackie to flee - infidelity? fraud? - without giving the game away. She has a likeable tone and warm, funny characters and is similar in style to Marian Keyes - the Ball family could have stepped out of the pages of any Keyes novel.

Dowling's peripheral characters are wonderfully entertaining. Jackie's divorce lawyer Velma and her Polish employee Lech provide much humour. They also illustrate one of Dowling's main points here - that you can find love and happiness in the most unlikely of places and with the most unlikely of people. Dowling seems to delight in matching her characters with seemingly incongruous partners and liberating them with love.

Like many novels of its genre, My Fabulous Divorce is a little predictable in some aspects of the story; when the reader gets to the end of the novel, they do know exactly what is going to happen. But as with all good romance novels, it doesn't really matter, as the anticipation is as enjoyable as the confirmation of the reader's suspicions.