Best-selling author Jacquelyn Mitchard's new novel, Twelve Times Blessed, is the kind of book that most of us are embarrassed to admit we're reading: The characters are well-rounded but shallow-minded, their lifestyles are wealthy and mostly morally bereft, and any moments of intimacy are dangerously reminiscent of soft porn.

The story itself is nothing earth-shattering and the writing is not particularly poetic, but somehow we keep reading. And we do it in moments when we think no one is watching and we hope we can immerse ourselves for at least 50 pages at a time, because we are voyeurs peering in at another woman's tumultuous marriage and sex life, and the experience is at once disconcerting and fascinating.

When True Dickinson turns 43 in February 2002, she is feeling unattractive and unloved, despite her thriving business and a happy, healthy, 10-year-old son. Widowed eight years earlier, True realizes she has never experienced true love and, despite a body that she fears is starting to show her age, True longs for the romantic intimacy of a soulmate. When she meets 33-year-old Hank Bannister on her birthday night, she is immediately attracted to his swarthy good looks but skeptical of his intentions.

True's skepticism of their 10-year age difference prevents her from fully believing Hank's professions of love as they embark on their whirlwind relationship. Despite her misgivings, True marries Hank a mere month later, and only six months after that they find themselves separated and barely able to speak to each other. Things mostly come around by the novel's close 12 months after it begins, as one might expect, and both True and Hank are greatly changed by all that transpires. In a phrase, they grow up.

Some of the immaturity is inherent in the characters, some in the narrative itself. When True and Hank are discussing the nature of their relationship early in the novel, for example, True reverts to what surely can best be described as junior high lingo:

" 'I thought you . . . I hoped, I guess, that you liked me. Liked me, liked me. Not just as a friend to talk things over with. And now, even if you say that you do, you really will never understand how difficult it is for me to say that right now.'"

Not long after, Mitchard herself commits a rather egregious error when True's son, Guy, responds to Hank's inquiry about his interest in basketball by stating that he "play(s) dee" on the town rec team. Mitchard either has her sports confused or doesn't know much about basketball, but whatever the case, such slips hurt her credibility as an author considerably.

Unfortunately, Mitchard's details, particularly those alluding to sexuality, are often alarmingly trite: "Hank stretches, pulls on his jeans over his naked butt with a shrug that flips True's heart like a poker chip."

But somehow the characters are intriguing enough to keep us reading, perhaps because both True and Hank have interesting, self-defining careers.

Hank is a Cajun chef who owns That One Place, the restaurant in the couple's hometown near Nantucket Sound where True and Hank first meet.

True is an entrepreneur who has been featured in national magazines for her creation of Twelve Times Blessed, a company that delivers homemade gifts each month for the first year after a new baby is born. Parts of the novel include brainstorming sessions for the company's products, and each chapter, aptly named for each subsequent month in the novel's one-year time span, begins with a description of the passel of Twelve Times Blessed gifts for that month.

Mitchard's first novel, The Deep End of the Ocean, earned her national attention when Oprah Winfrey selected it as her first Book Club title, and Mitchard's subsequent novels, The Most Wanted and A Theory of Relativity, also were national best sellers.

Despite its literary downfalls, Twelve Times Blessed doubtless will appeal to Mitchard's already dedicated fans for its lusty intimacy and sometimes quirky characters. It is the story of a 40-something woman who yearns for love, surprises herself by finding that love in a younger man and leaping impulsively into a second marriage, and who then must backtrack and learn what meaningful love is really all about. It is a "summer read" in the truest sense of the phrase: light but addictive, and shamelessly but seductively voyeuristic.

Jennie A. Camp's reviews and short stories have appeared in "Prairie Schooner," "Colorado Review," and other publications. She lives in Platteville.