It is three years since York author Donna Hay published her first romantic novel. STEPHEN LEWIS caught up with her to chat about book number four.

"THOSE books where women look in the mirror and notice their aristocratic cheekbones? Oh, please!" says Donna Hay, with a toss of the head. "No woman looks in a mirror and notices how good they look. They don't notice their cheekbones or their tumbling auburn hair. They notice the grey coming through, or the crow's feet."

The heroines of her own books are certainly like that. Her first two novels - Waiting In The Wings and Kiss And Tell - were traditional romantic comedies, full of impossibly good-looking heroes and heroines. But Donna has moved on from simple romances to grown-up books about 'real' people who bring with them all the baggage of family relationships.

This shift was apparent in her last book, Such A Perfect Sister, and continues with her newest novel, Some Kind Of Hero, which is published tomorrow by Orion.

She makes no apology.

"I'm 43!" she says. "The last time I went to a nightclub Duran Duran were in the charts. I have to write about the kind of people I know, which is married people, people in their 30s and 40s.

"By the time you reach that age, you're not going to get a simple love story. You're going to have failed relationships and children to get in the way. But they have love lives too! They even drink Chardonnay occasionally!"

Tess, the heroine of her new book, is a case in point. She is a 30-something York teacher and single mum with glasses and a kind face, who has never had much of a life of her own thanks to having to look after a disabled son, Dan, conceived in a moment of teenage madness.

She meets Jack, a recently-bereaved husband and father of one of her pupils, teenager Emily; and gradually, despite the enmity of their respective children, the two are drawn together.

Jack, Donna says, was based on a friend she knew. In the book, his wife has died. In real life, it was different.

"His wife didn't die, but upped and left him suddenly to live on the other side of the world. She went off with a New Zealander, leaving him with a 13-year-old daughter. Like Jack, he had thought he was a fairly good hands-on dad, but suddenly he was dealing with all this grief and loss. And like Jack, when it came to trying to form another relationship, he found it difficult. His daughter felt she had just lost one parent, and didn't want to lose another."

In the book, Emily - Jack's 14-year-old daughter - proves to be the main barrier between Tess and Jack, unwilling to accept a new 'mum' in her life so soon after her own has died.

Donna gets the stroppy teenager down to a T. It's nothing to do with her own daughter, 13-year-old Harriet, she insists with a laugh. "She's an angel. Although she will hate me saying that. More slammed doors!"

You might expect a novel based around a bereaved husband and a worn-out single mum to be heavy going - but not a bit of it. Some Kind Of Hero is as warm and funny as ever.

Much of the humour comes from the flailing efforts of Tess and Jack to cope with bringing up their children single handed, desperately trying to juggle work and home life and somewhere along the way find time for romance, too.

Then there are the barriers Donna throws in the way of their growing attraction - barriers in the form of blond, hunky Phil, the father of Tess' son Dan, who abandoned her years ago when she became pregnant and has suddenly become interested again; and sleek and sexy Charlie, Jack's colleague who is determined he should be more than that.

Readers seem to have taken to Donna's grown-up romances. Sales are doing better and better, she says, and she has recently signed a new deal with publisher Orion for two more books.

What York readers will love about Some Kind Of Hero, however - apart from the fact it has characters you can relate to - is that it is set in their city.

Donna herself lives with her husband and daughter just off Shipton Road. The action is set in the fictional York suburb of Haxsall, located somewhere between Earswick, Strensall and Haxby, with a bit of Tang Hall thrown in.

Pedants will note that drinking house The Three Legged Mare has been mysteriously transposed from its city-centre location to a suburban position next to a York comprehensive, handy for stressed-out teachers such as Tess to grab a lunch break. But if they have any sense it won't put them off enjoying what is a warm-hearted, funny and affecting read.

Some Kind Of Hero, by Donna Hay, is published by Orion tomorrow, priced £16.99

Updated: 09:20 Wednesday, June 18, 2003