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Loading... The Hot Flash Clubby Nancy Thayer
   None No current Talk conversations about this book.  LyndaWolters1 | Apr 3, 2024 |   It's not great literature, but it's an easy read with likable characters and a final scene that veers toward French Farce. This novel sets up a series that one might want to stash for future need, the way one would stash a luxury box of chocolates for a time when decadent self-indulgence is called for. (  ) LyndaInOregon | Dec 30, 2019 |  ) lhaines56 | Jun 28, 2019 | 4 Women. Feeling old, left out, dismissed. They get together and help each other out in the most unusual ways working on their common strengths. The book starts off easy with introductions into each of the personalities. Then it moves nicely to the plots. There is plenty of surprises and plenty of drama to satisfy this picky reader. About the only thing I did not like about the book was the men bashing. Yet they couldn't live with 'em and couldn't live without 'em. There were a couple of men in this book that I feel were the extreme. I mean, these guys were real assholes. So I took them at face value. Again, I highly recommend this book. It was enjoyable. It was a good story. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.... Flyinfox_SATX ( ) DVerdecia | Jan 29, 2016 | ) JudithDCollins | Nov 27, 2014 | no reviews | add a review
Belongs to SeriesHot Flash Club (1)
Fiction.
Literature.
Romance.
HTML:From the bestselling author of Between Husbands and Friends and An Act of Love comes a wise, wonderful, and delightfully witty “coming of age” novel about four intrepid women who discover themselves as they were truly meant to be: passionate, alive, and ready to face the best years of their lives. Meet Faye, Marilyn, Alice, and Shirley. Four women with skills, smarts, and secrets—all feeling over the hill and out of the race. But in a moment of delicious serendipity, they meet and realize they share more than raging hormones and lost dreams. Now as the Hot Flash Club, where the topics of motherhood, sex, and men are discussed with double servings of chocolate cake, they vow to help each other . . . and themselves. Faye, the artist. A determinedly cheerful widow and connoisseur of control-top pantyhose, she’s struggling with creative block and an empty, lonely house. Now she’s got a tricky problem to bring to the club’s table: how can they catch her perfect son-in-law cheating on her only daughter Laura? Shirley, the healer. Though her yoga-slender body belie her years, decades of dating losers and the strain of being broke make her feel her age. Shirley has a secret dream: a wellness spa that nurtures body and soul. But first she needs to believe in herself, in her abilities, and in her friends at the club. Marilyn, the brain. A paleontologist who has spent so many years looking at dried-up fossils, she’s almost become one herself. Worried that her brilliant but nerdy son is about to marry the very wrong woman, she gets some help from the HFC, who transform her from a caterpillar to a butterfly, with amazing results. Alice, the executive. Black and regal, she soared to the top of the corporate ladder. Now her shoes are murder on her arthritic back and the younger jackals are circling in for the kill. But as the inspiration behind the HFC, she’s about to discover something extraordinary: contentment. For Faye, Shirley, Marilyn, and Alice, the time has come to use it or lose it—be it their bodies, their brains, their spirits, and their sense of fun. Together they realize that they can have it all, perhaps for the first time in their lives. And though what sags may never rise again, feeling sexy has no expiration date— and best of all, with a little help from her friends, a woman can always start over . . . and never, ever, give up what matters most. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature American literature in English American fiction in English 1900-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.28)
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Wikipedia in English
4
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!) (