Book Review: A Likeable Woman by May Cobb

Kira Foster is a hot mess. Now in her late thirties, she’s never really gotten over the death of her mother Sadie over two decades earlier.

Sadie Foster was vibrant, artistic, and very much different from the Stepford Wives who populated her East Texas community. Most of her fellow housewives thought nothing of devoting their entire lives to domesticity, resorting to day drinking in order to numb any residual desire for pursuing other interests. But Sadie was a talented artist who found herself growing increasingly frustrated with the limitations of her life.

After she made the mistake of confiding in another housewife that she was thinking of going back to art school, her husband Richard quickly put his foot down:

“Darrell Matthews seems to have heard from his wife that that’s what you want. You know he’s in my Friday night poker group. Imagine how silly I felt when he blurted that out in front of everyone last night. Said I needed to keep an eye on you.”

 

Tears stinging in my eyes, I took a huge swallow of my bourbon. Fucking Caroline. She couldn’t wait to get home and spew my secret to her husband. And fucking Richard. All he could think about was how my ambition made him look in front of his friends.

Feeling unable to trust in any of her peers, she began to confide in her daughter Kira, as the two spent time together drawing and painting in Sadie’s backyard art shed. When Kira was fifteen years old, Sadie was found dead in that same shed. The general consensus in Longview was that the bohemian artist had grown so dissatisfied with her suburban life that she’d taken the only way out available to her.

Fast-forward twenty-plus years, and Kira has left her roots far behind, living in Southern California and carefully curating a glamorous Hollywood life for her Instagram page. She’s pretty sure her former friends keep the same social media tabs on her that she does on them, and the last thing she wants is for them to know she’s lonely and underpaid. So she isn’t entirely surprised to receive an invitation to a vow renewal ceremony from two of her childhood frenemies, even if she’s incredibly ambivalent about attending:

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.

Genevieve and Chad Greer’s vow renewal will be at the very same place where Sadie was last seen alive, with many of the same people present, too. Kira is tempted by the opportunity to finally demand some answers, but only decides to say yes when her estranged grandmother suddenly admits Kira might be right about Sadie’s death. Grandmother Foster has something in her possession that could support Kira’s claims, and she’ll give it to Kira if her granddaughter will only come home and see her.

Bolstered by the presence of her best friend and long-time crush Jack Sherman, Kira plunges back into a world of catty suburban preppies. She’s determined to get to the bottom of what happened to her mother for once and for all. But someone isn’t happy she’s returned, sending her threatening texts and warning her to go back to the Hollywood Hills. Has Kira roused the ire of someone more than willing to kill in order to keep Longview’s secrets safely buried?

I really enjoyed May Cobb’s The Hunting Wives, so was very excited to get my hands on her latest novel, with its terrific cover. I very much sympathized with Sadie’s struggles, even if I have trouble placing her issues two decades before the technological and cultural references used in the more recently set chapters of the book. Perhaps her community was just extra backwards in regard to women working outside the home. 

Kira is a little harder to root for. She lacks both self-awareness and a healthy sense of self-preservation as she stirs up emotions and gossip in her hometown during her relentless quest for the truth. Her odyssey does make for a page-turning thriller, as she unearths Longview’s shocking secrets in her pursuit of the closure she so desperately needs.