Angels, by Marian Keyes

Twenty years ago, a blockbuster set in Hollywood would promise escapism on a grand scale: big hair, big jewels and Jacuzzis, and orgasms as seismic as the San Andreas fault. In Angels, her sixth novel, the Irish bestselling writer Marian Keyes has downshifted the Jackie Collins fantasy, bringing it into line with 21st-century expectations of hair products and happy endings.

Keyes fans will already be familiar with the novel's narrator, Maggie Walsh, from books about her sisters: Claire, the heroine of Watermelon, and Rachel, the recovering alcoholic in Rachel's Holiday. Now it's Maggie's turn: the quiet, "lick-arsey" one of the five Walsh sisters, the one with a sensible job and happy marriage.

The novel opens, however, with Maggie's reluctant admission that her nine-year marriage to "Garv" is on the rocks. Faced with evidence of her husband's infidelity, Maggie decides to draw a line under her respectable past and spend time with her best friend, Emily, in sunny California.

Much of the pleasure of Keyes' work lies in the transformation of heroines from gibbering wrecks into loved-up success stories. For Maggie, "make-over" begins as soon as she arrives at Emily's pastel-shaded bungalow in Santa Monica. An aspiring screenwriter, Emily is hours away from making a career-breaking pitch to a mogul. Maggie agrees to pose as her assistant, and gets to witness the excesses of life in La La-land.

Keyes' cast of West Coast wackos – from goateed slackers to power-mad agents and diminutive screen idols – may not be original. But it never strikes a false note, thanks to the author's research, and her acquaintance with William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade.

Maggie proves a classic Keyes narrator: friendly, chatty and occasionally out of sorts. The culture shock of LA offers the kind of no-frills comic opportunities Keyes relishes; the obsession with the body beautiful being a particular target. Indeed, Maggie's reincarnation from Celtic blob into glossy lollypop forms the basis of an important "before and after" sub-plot which follows our plucky colleen from top LA hairdresser to eye-brow shaper to manicurist (not to mention several trips to Rodeo Drive).

As you would expect in the Trinny-and-Susannah school of literature, the results of Maggie's high-maintenance regime pay off and she gets herself invited to a real A-list Hollywood party. In a truly Jackie Collins moment, she finds herself on a squashy sofa, swinging high above the city, curled up with a "frosty" drink and a "sexy, sexy" man.

Not that a Keyes heroine would be ditsy enough to fall for such seductive baloney. Keyes' charm is meant to lie in the fact that she writes about people like us – women who go back to their men, jobs and Friday-night take-aways. Despite Maggie's best efforts to break from her past (sex with a movie director and a brief "lezzy" moment included), she looks set to respond to a last-minute rescue attempt by the lonesome Garv. Perhaps there's something to be said for the Jackie Collins version after all.