May Cobb is an author that has rapidly established herself as a summertime staple: Her female-centric domestic thrillers The Hunting Wives and My Summer Darlings are the very definition of indulgent, escapist fare, the sort of perfect poolside reading inherently promised by their neon-bright covers. Her latest novel, A Likeable Woman, initially seems as though it will follow the same format—its slightly provocative, thoroughly beachy cover feels right in line with her previous work.
But fans may be slightly surprised (and even disappointed) to discover that those are where similarities between A Likeable Woman and Cobb’s previous works generally end. That’s not entirely true—this is an author who still excels at giving largely unlikeable lead characters compelling emotional arcs and original stories—but its slow burn, largely formulaic mystery and underwritten characters make this summer thriller feel a lot more like homework than a decadent treat.
The story follows Kira Foster, a girl who grew up in a small East Texas town but was shipped off to boarding school following her mother Sadie’s suicide. Convinced that her mother would never have killed herself, Kira has ever really been able to get past her death: She’s abandoned her art, works a dead end job, and has cut off most contact with the family she left behind. Lonely and bored, she spends most of her time crafting an image of the Hollywood-style life she’s not living on her Instagram.
But when an invitation to a hometown reunion arrives—alongside a call from her estranged grandmother that suggests she’s ready to hand over an important family heirloom that may shed new light on Sadie’s death—Kira reluctantly heads back to Texas, to confront old ghosts and try to find out once and for all what happened to her mother. Along the way, she receives threatening texts that warn her to leave the past alone, rekindles some feelings with her teenage crush and BFF Jack, and finds out some uncomfortable truths about the people in the town she left behind.
Like most of Cobb’s work, the story of A Likeable Woman is at its best when it’s exploring the complex (often toxic) threads between women in small towns. The catty frenemies vibe that exists between women who have not only known each other at virtually every stage of their lives but failed to see much of the world beyond their hometown is on the nose uncomfortable, as is widespread gossip, backstabbing, and performative attempts to repair marriages in crisis mode. Kira’s difficult relationship with her sister Kate—and the ways their individual relationships with and memories of their mother diverge—is particularly fascinating, and something I wish we’d spent more time with.
Unfortunately, much of A Likeable Woman’s larger mystery is clunkily handled, from the basic mechanics of how various clues are revealed—you won’t believe how many times Kira randomly decides to leave specific activities (sometimes more than once at the same event!) to return to reading her mother’s unfinished novel rather than just consuming it all at once—to the incredibly obvious red herrings about who might be behind her mother’s alleged murder. This is particularly disappointing given that Cobb has already proven herself capable of spinning compelling and surprising stories, with, yes, unlikeable women, at their centers.
It’s possible the real problem is the novel’s specific dual perspective format—her previous books had multiple POVs to rely on that offered a more expansive and often contradictory view of the story’s events and the various women taking part in them. Here, we already know that Kira’s mother is dead, and her “memoir” such as it is, offers precious little insight into her character beyond documenting her abusive spouse and a clandestine affair with a neighbor’s husband. Kira herself is shallow and selfish in a way the book struggles to truly acknowledge, rarely taking responsibility for her own bad choices or the way she frequently indulges in the same behavior she is quick to condemn others for. (Her almost obsessive need to believe that her childhood crush’s wife is a detached monster—and bad mother!—in order to make herself feel better about chasing a married man is especially uncomfortable.)
For all its occasionally salacious subject matter, A Likeable Woman is also strangely paced—the book’s first half moves extremely slowly, teasing earth-shattering revelations and important conversations that are almost universally put off in the most awkward way possible. (There are a lot of “I have something important to tell you…later!” vibes.) As Kira nears the final chapters of her mother’s book and a drunken party kicks into full swing, things pick up considerably but don’t feel bad if you find it something of a slog to get there.
A novel that doesn’t measure up to the best we know this author is capable of, A Likeable Woman ultimately ends exactly the way you think it will, and makes little effort to wrestle with the larger concepts and themes its title (which is also the title of Sadie’s memoir) implies. Perhaps if the story had wrestled a bit more deliberately with where (and how) our collective ideas of womanhood and the expectations we attach to gender come from, it would have been better for it. I’m still eagerly awaiting Cobb’s next work, but this one is a surprising let-down.
A Likeable Woman is available now wherever books are sold.
Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter @LacyMB