Spotlight & Giveaway: A Likeable Woman by May Cobb

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author May Cobb to HJ!

Hi May and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, A Likeable Woman!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

A LIKEABLE WOMAN follows Kira, a thirty-something woman who fled her small, insular East Texas town decades ago after her mother’s mysterious death, vowing never to return. But when a frenemy’s invitation to a vow renewal party arrives along with a text from her Grandmother claiming she has something of Kira’s mother’s—an unpublished memoir she left behind which holds secrets to how she died—Kira returns.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

“If I can impart one thing to you it’s this: Don’t be like me, don’t be a likeable woman.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• It’s set in my hometown of Longview, which is nestled deep in the lush, eerie piney woods of East Texas.
• A Likeable Woman features a book-within-a book and is set in present day and also the early 90s.
• As in all my books, the characters are strong Southern women who love strong cocktails – margaritas, bourbon, wine.

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

Voice! For A Likeable Woman, the story first came to me when I heard Sadie’s voice and I scrambled to get the words down that were coursing through my head.
 

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

Actually, this is my most personal and emotionally-wrought thriller, and when I typed the final words, THE END, I wept! Which was a first for me!
 

Readers should read this book….

Readers who love closed-circle mysteries like Lucy Foley’s THE GUEST LIST and Ruth Ware’s In A DARK, DARK WOOD will enjoy this aspect of A LIKEABLE WOMAN, which takes place over the course of a weekend and has finite number of suspects. As I said, it’s my most emotionally-wrought thriller and I’m hoping that readers will love the depth of character I aimed to write, the toxic/twisty female friendships, the dysfunctional family dynamics, and lastly, the bond between mother and daughter even across the boundaries of time.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

I’ve just handed in my next one, which is my first novel set outside of East Texas! It’s another suspense, an erotic thriller, set in Hollywood.

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: 1 physical copy of A LIKEABLE WOMAN by May Cobb

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Which character, Kira or Sadie, did you most identify with, and why?

 
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Excerpt from A Likeable Woman:

Now I’m up, pacing the thinly carpeted length of my six‑ hundred‑square‑foot apartment in the Hollywood Hills. I make a pass by the invitation, wanting to snatch it and shred it into tiny pieces, but instead I continue on into the galley kitchen, where I open the fridge and drag out a paper carton of pad Thai. I eat it cold from the container as I lean against the counter.
When I opened the mail on Friday evening after work and my cell started exploding with the group texts from my childhood friends—Genevieve being more frenemy than friend—I ordered four servings of pad Thai and three bowls of coconut and mushroom soup, knowing I’d be moored at home for days.
I sat, parked at my tiny café table, staring at the invitation, swirling the steaming noodles around on a plate, forcing myself to eat small forkfuls.
And I texted Jack. Jack Sherman, my childhood best friend and former crush. We were each other’s first kiss, four years old and zipped up inside his Incredible Hulk sleeping bag. An odd kiss where our teeth knocked together. We only ever text now to wish each other a happy birthday—his on October tenth, mine August third—and I took this as an excuse to check in. Pathetic, really, since he’s been blissfully married for a decade now and has a real

life, unlike me. He’s a neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins and has a three‑year‑old son.
Me: Umm . . . You guys going?
Jack: Umm . . . Hi! And hell no .
A sinking feeling spread over me. Even though I didn’t want to return home, the chance of seeing Jack again after all this time cast butterflies across my chest.
A few seconds later, the three dots started leaping again, letting me know he was writing more.
Jack: Why? Are you?
Me: Don’t know yet. Probably not.
Jack: Well, Melanie’s going. I told her she could have a girls’ weekend, but she’s pissed. Wants me there with her. I’m just . . . not really like those guys anymore, y’know? And I can’t imagine you want to go either?
This was the most we had texted in years, and my pulse jangled in my neck, my face flush from this new contact with him. I could hear his voice across the line, as if he were speaking in my ear. That rich oaky voice, which was never bent with the twang of the region but always sounded sonorous and kind. And yes, sexy.
Also, Jack was the one who came to my side the night they found her. When I was shaking, when I wouldn’t let anyone else near me, he asked my father if he could see me. I remember him standing in the doorway to my bedroom, his fifteen‑year‑old bulk filling the space. A silhouette of strength leaning against the frame. I was in bed, buried under my floral‑printed bedspread, eyes bloated from wailing.
He’d been at an out‑of‑town football game that night, a few hours away. He was a second‑string running back, usually sitting on the bench—sports were never his forte; he only played football because the rest of his friends were doing the same—and he told

me he’d come as soon as he’d gotten off the bus and heard the news.
He crossed the room, slid into bed, and roped his strong arms around me.
“You’re not alone, you’re not alone,” he whispered in his soothing voice, over and over again, as more hot tears gushed out of me. Somehow, he knew those were the very words I needed to hear then, because my mom and I had been simpatico. Best friends. Tethered by our artistic souls—misunderstood by Katie, my older and more sensible sister; and my cold‑faced father, Richard. We had existed in a kind of bubble, and Katie had been part of it at first, but then she grew out of it, drifted away from us.
I’d spend bottomless hours in Mom’s art shed as a little girl, our knees touching as she guided wax over cotton sheets for her batiks while I moved globs of paint around on poster board. I can still hear her voice in my head, sometimes singsongy, sometimes frantic, sharing things with me she probably shouldn’t have been. Always followed by a “Don’t mention that to your father, Kira.”
She named me Kira after Olivia Newton John’s character in Xanadu, one of her favorite films. She’d seen it at the drive‑in years before I was born and loved the music, the mythology, the story of nine muses who cross back and forth between time. When it finally came out on VHS, she made me watch it over and over with her.
After I couldn’t stomach any more pad Thai, I peeled the plastic lid off the soup as I considered how to respond to Jack. I knew what he meant by And I can’t imagine you want to go either. He was re‑ ferring to Mom, but I didn’t want to get into that with him, to prick at that old wound again, so I dodged the subject.
Me: I need time to figure it out. But I was thinking about it.
Jack: Well, I’ll only go if you go, so let me know.

I sent back a simple thumbs‑up emoji and placed my cell face‑ down, cradling my chin in my hands.

I woke early this morning, before the birds started their chirping and when the sky was still a deep indigo, and dragged my laptop into the bed. I emailed in sick to work. I sat there, cross‑legged
in bed, my laptop baking my thighs, looking at flights, before slamming it shut without booking anything.
I shouldn’t go. I shouldn’t put myself through all that, but as pitiful as it sounds, I want to see Jack. I want to see myself reflected in his face, the strong girl I was once was, his neighborhood friend who he admired. I’ll only go if you go. Sounds like he wants to see me, too. And now I have to decide if it’s worth it. My vision blurs around the edges when I think about facing the others—Genevieve, Katie, not to mention Jack’s wife, Melanie—and also returning to The Farm.
I refold the carton of pad Thai, shove it back in the fridge. Drag myself the few steps back to bed, where I wilt under the covers and feel myself sinking back down into sleep.

Excerpted from A Likeable Woman by May Cobb, published by Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2023

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

Kira’s back in her affluent hometown for the first time in years and determined to unravel the secrets of her mother’s death–hidden in the unpublished memoir she left behind– even if it kills her…

After her troublemaker mother’s mysterious death, Kira fled her wealthy Texas town and never looked back. Now, decades later, Kira is invited to an old frenemy’s vow renewal celebration Though she is reluctant to go, there are things pulling her home. . . like chilled wine and days spent by the pool . . . like her sexy teenage crush, Jack. But more important are the urgent texts from her grandmother, who says she has something to give Kira. Something related to her mother’s death, something that make it look an awful lot like murder.

When her grandmother gives Kira a memoir that her mother had been working on before she died, Kira is drawn into the past and all the sizzling secrets that come along with it. With few allies left in her gossipy country-club town, Kira turns to Jack for help. As she gets closer to what—and who—might have brought about her mother’s end, it becomes clear that someone wants the past to stay buried.
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Meet the Author:

May Cobb earned her MA in literature from San Francisco State University, and her essays and interviews have appeared in the Washington Post, the Rumpus, Edible Austin, and Austin Monthly. Her previous novels are The Hunting Wives and My Summer Darlings. A Texas native, she lives in Austin with her family.
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