New American Library (Trade Paperback), ISBN 0451208692

Books about groups of girlfriends helping each other through life and love are nothing new, but in Five Dimes, the group gets a male twist. Jorja, Rachel, Celeste and Casey make up the four girlfriends, while Danny rounds out the tight-as-family circle of friends. The five reunite when Jorja takes a high profile job with a local TV station and moves back to her native Detroit.

Five Dimes follows the friends through their successes and failures in every aspect of their lives, a refreshingly broad view when many novels of this type fall into the rut of examining only character's love lives. Family issues, tension within the group and interesting jobs with their own pitfalls plump up the characters, making them more than just throbbing loins and passionate kissers.

All five characters follow their own story lines, but Danny and Jorja take the leading roles. Danny runs his own ad agency with Celeste, but a rift widens between them when Danny tries to answer some questions about himself -- and doesn't like the answers he finds.

Jorja, a single mom hurt by love in the past, staunchly refuses to give Mark Collins a chance. A successful doctor who loves her, Mark represents everything Jorja's friends know she deserves. Before she can be happy, Jorja must come to terms with her past. Danny shows his friendship by not letting Jorja hide to protect herself, while Jorja supports Danny's search for himself.

Danny and Jorja's relationship saves both of them from sabotaging their lives because of their emotional baggage. Hilmon skillfully creates a meaningful friendship between a man and a woman based on honesty and respect that contains no sexual tension. This sort of relationship often occurs in real life but seldom appears in books, making Jorja and Danny's relationship doubly refreshing.

The only place in which Hilmon's characters slip is in some of their dialogue. Often the characters speak in slang, which seems forced into their mouths. The slang reads like an afterthought, slapped in between the quotes but not coming from the characters hearts. But the characters shine despite this occasional woodenness and make Five Dimes well worth the short time it takes to read.

Ceridwen Lewin

New Hampshire writer Ceridwen Lewin is working on her first novel and numerous short stories.

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