The Hot Flash Club, Nancy Thayer

SOME SPOILERS - BUT NOTHING THAT WILL RUIN THE BOOK ;)

When four women in their 50s-60s meet by chance at a mutual acquaintance’s retirement party and duck out for some real fun (cocktails and chocolate), they find themselves commiserating over their mid-life issues. Deciding each one could play a part in helping the other through their difficulties, they form the HFC - The Hot Flash Club.

We then follow Faye, the recently widowed artist who is tapped to become a live-in housekeeper for an uber wealthy family to see if their daughter truly loves the son of HFC member Marilyn. Marilyn in turn, who is a tenured professor at MIT, takes on the role of assistant to Alice, the fierce executive to find out if Alice’s job is at risk. Alice assists Shirley, the flighty, hippie-dippie masseuse create a business plan to open a retreat, and Shirley spies on a young woman having an affair with Faye’s daughter.

While like any book where there are multiple protagonists, it takes a minute to keep the characters straight, but Nancy Thayer does an excellent job with that and with keeping the storyline moving quite cohesively. The downside for me was I really wanted more ‘hot flashishness.’

Written in 2003, The Hot Flash Club just sort of faded off into the reader’s imagination as the ending, which was a typical style of that time. This leaves the reader wondering about, well, everything. Did Faye’s daughter and her philandering husband work things out? Is Alice going to stay with the man whom she just met but confessed to having recently been diagnosed with prostate cancer? Will Shirley get the retreat up and running? And will Marilyn settle down with her co-worker? I’m not a fan of the fade to black ending as it leaves people like me with an innate need for clarity too many sleepless nights.

All-in-all, a fun, well-written, easy-to-read page-turner. (And for those of you who actually read reviews, that was likely the most hyphens I’ve ever used in one sentence!)