Susan Fales-Hill's "One Flight Up" leapt off the shelves at me.

Its title is so close to that of my not-likely-to-be-successful novel "One Flight Down," I just had to read it.

What a pleasant diversion.

It's a bit like "Sex and the City," if that series had featured a more racially diverse cast. In addition to gabbing about sex and men and sex and children and sex and work, the women of "One Flight Up" are faced with issues of race.

That's just one layer of this romp, though.

No new ground is broken here, no deep insights into the inner workings of the human mind, no passages begging for a re-read.

But that's OK. It was fabulous to spend a few hours escaping reality with these women.

I was surprised to find an online reading group guide. This just didn't strike me as the kind of book that would prompt a lot of discussion.

Question No. 8 did intrigue me: Sage points out that women "trash their own dreams to make everyone else thrive." Do you think Sage is right? Why or why not?

So I guess there is much to discuss here after all.

-Tricia Ambrose