Penny Baker is a member of the ‘sandwich’ generation. Sandwiched between three kids demanding her time, the family  dog, her workplace,  and her elderly parents who are beginning to need her support more and more.

Penny is, in general, quite happy with her lot, but she’s tired, her hormones are all over the place as perimenopause homes into view, and as we meet her, she’s being yelled at by an irate Audi driver. It seems that while driving to work, minding her own business, she spotted her son’s girlfriend snogging a random man at a bus stop and as a result has gone straight into the back of an Audi.

So what’s going on in Penny’s life? As with so many women in their mid-40s to early 50s, It’s all about the emotional and practical load. She carries the weight of the needs of all the others in her life and her kids all have their own struggles that fall heavily on her shoulders; her eldest has left home already and Penny worries about her almost all the time. Her middle child is the boyfriend of the above mentioned bus-stop snogger, and her youngest is just leaving primary school. Her Mum has recently been diagnosed with dementia and her Dad is finding it harder to cope so is leaning on her more and more. She worries about them both too. So there’s a lot of demand on her in her personal life. Work wise, she is lucky enough to work at a job that she loves – managing a very special kind of care home, but things are looking more and more financially tricky AND the inspectors are in. So everything is just getting a little bit harder. On the plus side, Penny does have the support of a little clutch of similarly aged friends to lean on, all of whom have their own clearly defined roles within the group. 

A new person at work throws a little more chaos into the mix and Penny finds herself leaning towards a kind of escape – where she can, even for a little while, escape the constant demands around her. What to do when you feel invisible, frumpy, not at your best. Potential disaster (or triumph?) looms.

There is quite a trend in this genre at the moment (hooray, perimenopausal women are no longer entirely invisible!), although most of us don’t need to be at that stage of life, or have children to empathise with someone feeling like they are being pulled in all kinds of directions at once.

While Penny did annoy me at times by causing several of her issues herself and ending up in some tricky situations for no apparent reason other than to show how erratic she and her rogue hormones could be, (Top tip: if your dog runs through poo all the time and then traipses it through your entire home, perhaps try using a lead), and there are a few cliches throughout, it is a very true to life depiction of someone who spends so much of their time supporting the people they love that there’s very little left for themselves.

I read this book over ten days with The Pigeonhole book club, where a “stave” is released a day – and I think if I’d have been able to read on, I’d have read it in one or two sittings!

Hot Mother starts off light and funny, but as Penny’s mum’s dementia progresses, it takes a more serious turn. Just a little warning: if dementia is a trigger for you, then it might be a tough read. Having recently seen an elderly family member succumb to this awful condition, it did tug on my heartstrings and at one point I think someone was cutting onions nearby, but it did made me smile too. I feel a difficult subject was dealt with very sensitively and carefully by the author.

Published July 25, 2024 by Hera

4/5

About the Author: Nancy Peach (via Amazon)

Nancy Peach is a writer of commercial women’s fiction, a mother of three, and an owner of various ridiculous-looking pets including a splodgy cat, a rescue dog with wonky legs, and another dog who unexpectedly grew to be the size of a small horse. She is also a practicing doctor working for the NHS and for a national cancer charity, and has been writing (in a terribly British, embarrassed, secretive sort of way) for as long as she can remember.

Nancy has been longlisted for the Comedy Women in Print Prize 2020, nominated for the Joan Hessayon Award 2021, and shortlisted for the Harper Collins / Gransnet competition 2019. She is a member of the Romantic Novelists Association and is represented by Katie Fulford at Bell-Lomax-Moreton.