The Infidelity Pact

An ill-conceived pact between four L.A. housewives to each indulge in a year-long extramarital affair leads to freedom, revenge, social climbing, sex, drugs, and murder in this hilarious and biting solo debut by a coauthor of The Right Address and Wolves in Chic Clothing.
To address their general malaise, four privileged L.A. housewives each make a pact to have a year-long extramarital affair. Their husbands are declared off-limits and the friends agree to confide only in each other (the theory being that dalliances cause trouble in large part because word gets out). And so our ladies embark—two eagerly, one cautiously, and one very reluctantly—on perilous romantic paths that lead to all manner of adventure and intrigue. As the year progresses, secrets are revealed, betrayals pile up, desires are brought to light, lies are told, and each woman is forced to face up to the truth of who she is and the choices that have brought her here. When the women discover that a local gossip has been spying on their conversations and is threatening to reveal their secrets to the whole town, how far will they go to stop him? And how well do these friends really know each other anyway?
With a wry eye and an insider’s view of L.A.’s wealthy and occasionally desperate housewives, The Infidelity Pact is at once poignant and hilarious, a book that is sure to be talked about on both coasts—and everywhere in between.

Publishers Weekly

Four L.A. moms in their mid-30s are bored with marriage and child-rearing. Over meals in trendy eateries, devious Victoria has reasons of her own to persuade Helen, Leelee and Eliza to invent a dangerous, rut-defying game: they will all have affairs over the course of a year; they will confide only in each other; husbands of the four are off limits. Karasyov (coauthor of Wolves in Chic Clothing) gives a good sense of the stakes for each woman and works to give each a unique personality and background (Eliza has a magazine job; Helen's Korean-American; Victoria's mean and has a high-powered agent husband). But the four blur together, and flashes of inventive plotting flame out in an overheated ending. (June)

CARRIE KARASYOV is the coauthor (with Jill Kargman) of The Right Address and Wolves in Chic Clothing. After spending several years in Santa Monica, California, she’s back in her native New York along with her husband and two sons.