Beware: Here comes yet another writer from the U.K. whose publishers are offering up comparisons to "Sex and the City" and "Bridget Jones' Diary."

Scottish-born to Irish parents, Morag Prunty has already made a name for herself as a young publishing whirlwind.

At 21 she became the youngest editor ever of a national U.K. magazine, when she took over the helm at Looks.

She later ran Irish Tatler Magazine and in 1993 wrote "Boys! A Users Guide for Teenage Girls," which has been translated into 12 languages. Now comes her novel, "Wild Cats and Colleens," with its inevitably hardened, cynical women and reckless, feckless men.

In this case we meet Laura, Gloria and Sandy, all thirtysomething or on the verge, and in search of men and laughs.

Along the way, Prunty targets both the excesses of the Celtic Tiger and green-eyed Irish Americans on the lookout for authentic leprechauns.

This is familiar stuff. But Prunty's prose packs a punch ("the vodka gremlins must have been at her in the night again"), and there are many laughs here, even if we've heard her dry, angry, understated voice before. ("At the top of her list of People Who Deserve to Lose an Earlobe was Francesca Duffée (christened Fionnuala Duffy?")

($25 / 297 pages

/ HarperCollins)