Housewife Blues and Chihuahua Stories

Hot Flash by Kathy CarmichaelMy rating: 5 of 5 starsMy first book by author Kathy Carmichael and for me Hot Flash was a winner!Jill Storm is a forty year old divorced mother of a 17 year old son who is just a little bit eccentric, he only speaks French (mostly) when he decides to speak at all and as a single mother holding down a full time job Jill has all she can do to make ends meet for her and Stephen.To make matters worse her ex-husband is now their son's "other mother" due to a sex change operation where Daniel Storm became Stormy Daniels, talk about a low blow to the ego when you are in competition to be the best mother with the "father" of your child! Jill is a Sous chef at a local hotel, she is very talented and quick on her feet at work but due to her employer demanding the chef be a well known name to draw in customers to the restaurant her dream of taking over as head chef is not one that will ever come to fruition. Top that off with the fact her son desperately wants to go to college to study art and Jill needs a way to finance his tuition and you have a recipe for quite a quirky story.Filled with lots of laughs, lots of crazy scheming by Jill to find that one man out there who can make her dreams of financial security and a home with grass behind a white picket fence come true, a group of female friends who are each in their own way her rock to lean on and you have the perfect light summer read. The hot 3rd grade teacher who it seems has a bit of a long standing "crush" on Jill brings quite a bit of "heat" to enrich Jill's life, along with her early "Hot Flashes". This is one of those instances when the head and the heart do not agree and truth be told sometimes the head is wrong!While I have to admit the only reason I sat down with this ebook was it being a free for Kindle book it was well worth my time! I laughed out loud so hard at one point I almost had a "wee" accident. The story has an easy to follow steady flow, the characters are all very wonderfully realistically fleshed out and very fun to get to know and the HEA at the end is every bit as good for the reader to experience as it was for JIll!Kathy Carmichael has a backlist to choose from that hopefully has some more books on it that give me just as much reading pleasure, I am curious to find out soon! My advice is for you to find out soon too.