A Likeable Woman

Named A Most Anticipated Thriller of Summer 2023 by Oprah Daily ∙ Buzzfeed ∙ SheReads ∙ BookBub ∙ PureWow ∙ CrimeReads ∙ and more! 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hometown for the first time in years and determined to unravel the secrets of her mother’s death--hidden in the unpublished memoir she left behind--even if it kills her.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 sexy Jack, her childhood crush. But more important are the urgent texts from her grandmother, who says she has something for Kira. Something related to her mother’s death, something that makes 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 discovering what--and who--might have brought about her mother’s end, it becomes clear that someone wants the past to stay buried. And they might come after Kira next.

Autorentext
May Cobb is an award-winning author of The Hunting Wives, My Summer Darlings, A Likeable Woman, and Big Woods. Her books have received attention from Book of The Month, The Today Show, and Oprah Daily and have been optioned for film/TV. She has an M.A. from San Francisco State University and her essays and interviews have appeared in The Washington Post and Good Housekeeping. She currently lives in Austin with family.

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**Named A Most Anticipated Thriller of Summer 2023 by Oprah Daily ∙ Buzzfeed ∙ SheReads ∙ BookBub** ∙ PureWow ∙ CrimeReads ∙ and more!

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affluent hometown for the first time in years and determined to unravel the secrets of her mother’s death—hidden in the unpublished memoir she left behind—even if it kills her. . .from the bestselling author of The Hunting Wives.

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 sexy Jack, her childhood crush. But more important are the urgent texts from her grandmother, who says she has something for Kira. Something related to her mother’s death, something that makes 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 discovering what—and who—might have brought about her mother’s end, it becomes clear that someone wants the past to stay buried.

And they might come after Kira next.

Leseprobe
1

Kira

Midmorning sunlight winks through the glass-slat windows, but I'm still lying in bed, the black paper invitation shouting at me from across the room. It's sitting upright, resting atop a stack of junk mail on my wooden café table, where it's been since Friday evening after I retrieved it from the mailbox.

20 years and still going strong!

We'd be delighted if you'd join us,

Chad & Genevieve Greer,

as we re-tie the knot with a

Vow Renewal Ceremony

Saturday, October 15th, at 6 p.m.

The Walters's Farm

7328 Evergreen Road

Longview, Texas

Please RSVP by September 15th

The envelope it came in-black on the outside, bloodred on the inside-is gashed open, the tiny RSVP card peeking out like the tip of a cat's tongue.

I can't pull it out yet and mark "Attending" or "Not attending" because I can't decide.

Of course Genevieve wants to throw herself a bash. She's always been attention seeking, and from the group text I've been ignoring since Friday night, it's clear that it's not just the ceremony itself but a weekend full of eye-rolling events she has planned for us.

Friday night at the bowling alley, kids welcome. Saturday morning ladies' brunch at The Farm (no doubt some farm-to-table BS), followed by crafts of some sort (WTF, are we five years old?), ending with a spa day complete with manis and pedis and a wine tasting.

The guys, of course, get to do the fun stuff on Saturday-canoeing, archery, and duck hunting. Chased with a private uncorking of a local distillery's batch of bourbon made exclusively for the occasion.

I'm certain the entire event will be just a giant Band-Aid on what has, from all accounts, been a very nasty marriage. But it's not just the spectacle that's making the pit of dread in my stomach expand. It's the prospect of having to go home again. A place I fled over twenty years ago, after I lost her. Mom.

I've returned only the one time, for my father's funeral.

All eyes were on me the entire day, to see if I would shatter. I'm the fragile one, the potentially unstable one. Just like her mother, they shout-whispered. And also, I'm the only one who believes my mother was murdered, that she didn't die by her own hand.

I've put acres of auburn desert land between me and East Texas, moving as far west as I could without plunging into the Pacific. But every so often-especially for events like these-East Texas tugs at me, threatening to yank me back to its pine-soaked atmosphere and engulf me. Just reading the invitation has landed me in bed for virtually the entire weekend.

Especially because of the venue: The Farm. The last place anyone saw her alive.

She wandered into the woods. She'd been having one of her spells, they said. Sadie. Always quick to tears. Hysterical. They glanced up from the bonfire and saw the shock of her platinum hair, her russet-colored fox-fur coat, before she slipped into the forest.

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 k