The Flirt

Kathleen Tessaro's The Flirt exemplifies my favorite kind of chick-lit.  Colorful characters, minding their own business, find themselves in unusual, often a bit far fetched, situations that all come together in the end. Funny situations convey important messages, or deal with serious, heart-breaking issues.

In The Flirt, the old age topic of love is addressed - young love, new love, physical love, old love, and family love.  Hughie Venables-Smythes thinks himself an actor. Currently out of work, he answers an ad to become a professional flirt, where he will be paid to flirt with women to make them feel better about themselves. His fellow "flirts" have stories of their own, as do the targets of the flirting efforts. But, like all of us, each is looking for his or her own style of happiness.

The Flirt is a fun, engaging novel involving several seemingly independent characters living in London. There are some serious parts, but lots of funny parts and wonderful, well-developed characters. In the end, when everything falls in place, and all the characters are where they should be, it seems to all make sense.