Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Nancy Grace Killer Reads: A Likeable Woman

Episode Date: July 6, 2023

Nancy Grace talks with author May Cobb about her new book, A LIKEABLE WOMAN. This thriller follow's  Kira’s journey back in her affluent hometown. Initially, it's a party invitation that brings Kira home, but  the secrets of her mother’s death weigh on the woman's mind and heart. And now, the enticement of an unpublished memoir written by Kira's mom brings resolution and danger.  A LIKEABLE WOMAN by May Cobb, available July 11, 2023.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Killer Reads, the Nancy Grace Book Club today. A Likeable Woman is a brand new book by Mae Cobb. Jacob and this is how it starts. When her grandmother gives Kira a memoir that her mother, Kira's mother, had been working on before she committed suicide. Kira gets into the mind of her mother that she can no longer speak to, can no longer ask questions of, and finds out about a whole other side of her mother's life. This is where I come in. Was it truly a suicide? Guys, I'm Nancy Grace, and joining me right now, Mae Cobb, the author of A Likeable Woman.

Also with us, and I felt after reading the book that I really needed to shrink. Okay. No offense, Mae Cobb. Also with me is a renowned psychologist joining us out of Manhattan, trauma and crime expert, Karen Stark at Karenstark.com. That's Karen with a C. May, now in your book, A Likeable Woman, first question I have is why do you have a woman on the front in a swimsuit?

That's such a great question. So the publisher is terrific at giving me these great, catchy, summery covers. And I think they wanted something bold and beachy. And there's that scene in there with Sadie when she's in the pool at their family's friend's house. So I think they also wanted to capture like a pretty pivotal scene in the book where something happens. So I think it just hints at like sort of the mystery, the power of Sadie and sort of the sexiness too and the sizzling secrets.

The sizzling secrets. Okay, that was my first question. You name your book, A Likeable Woman. May also wrote My Summer Darlings. Explain your title. So I really, after my first two books came out, The Hunting Lives and My Summer Darlings, and when those came out, you know, I got lots of great reviews and a book of the month pick and Amazon editors pick and, you know, option for film TV, great stuff.

But there was a little bit of a backlash against I don't like unhinged applied to women because have you ever noticed when a man raises his voice and makes a point they're being strong and assertive when a woman does it? Oh, she's hysterical. She's unhinged. I don't like that. Yeah, I don't either. And I will personally open up a can of whoop ass on anybody that says that uh-oh sorry i got hysterical go ahead so all these unhinged southern females i don't like where you're going but coincidentally from where do you hail

so i'm from longview texas which is in deep east Texas in the Piney Woods, about two hours east of Dallas, near Louisiana. Beautiful. And yeah, it is gorgeous there. And it's also like eerie and heavily forested. And so, yeah, I'm very, to Nancy, oddly protective of my female characters. And so I just decided it's kind of a tongue-in-cheek title, A Likeable Woman. And I wanted to play with Sadie's character mainly because she's an artist and she's kind of a little bit of a

rebel in her Tupperware-toting, claustrophobic suburban neighborhood. Wait a minute. What's wrong with Tupperware toting, you know, claustrophobic suburban neighborhood. Wait a minute, what's wrong with Tupperware? Although you can get it a lot cheaper at Dollar Tree. Everybody, if you're buying toothpaste, Tupperware, toilet paper, paper towels,

anywhere but Dollar Tree, you're crazy, but go ahead. Now you're attacking Tupperware? And also pool floats. Now, I personally love Tupperware, but I'm just trying to paint a picture of just this very sort of like curtain-twitching little neighborhood that she's in. And, you know, most of the women are housewives, nothing against housewives, but they don't really understand her, and neither does her husband. So she's constantly chasing against these norms. Her story set in the early 90s, and then Kira's... You're talking about Sadie. Now, I just want to understand the protagonist in this book

is Kira. Now, do you call her Kira or Kyra? Kira, yeah. Oh, you know, a funny thing about that. I read the entire series of Harry Potter to the children when they would still want to hear me read to them. I mean, all of them and all the Chronicles of Narnia in quick succession. But we called Hermione Hermione for the entire series. So I just want to hear, in my head, you also call her Kira, correct? Yes, I call her Kira

because she's, in my mind, she's based on Olivia Newton-John's character in Xanadu, that movie. Oh, okay. From way back when. I can see that. Yeah. I don't know where I got Jake.

Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Before the grandmother decides to give Kira her mom's memoir, she was already getting threats about coming back home. Yes. Yes, she was. Yeah, and that's kind of the scary, suspenseful part. You know, who is sending her these creepy texts? And who doesn't want her to come back home and find out the truth? So describe some of the texts for our listeners.

Gosh, it's like she lands at the airport in Dallas. So Kira's been living in, she fled that little East Texas townas town longview after her mom committed suicide or did she uh decades before she's been living in los angeles um and so she's flying back for her friends or really it's her frenemies vow renewal party that set over a weekend and so as soon as she goes from longview to la.A., that's quite a culture shock. We lived in L.A. and I think I was the only one that was short and round. Everybody else was tall and skinny with these really big breasts. That's how I felt out there, too, Nancy. So I came on back home for about a year and a half.

I couldn't take it. And doing Dancing with the Stars did not help because all of those pros were perfect. And they were not perfect because they had surgery. They were just perfect. Okay. Wow. That said, so she goes from Longview to L.A. Okay, then what happens?

And then she gets sort of, you know, lured back home against her better wishes and her better judgment and as soon as she lands in the Dallas airport, she gets a text that says, you're making a very big mistake. Okay, Karen Stark joining me, a psychologist joining us out of Manhattan. Right

there. Most people go, okay, bye. Bye. I'll just take my bag now. But you've got to think about it, Karen. Somebody has her cell number, somebody's threatening her and they know she's touched down at the airport.

Yeah, I think that the book would never go anywhere if they did that. But I wanted to say, Nancy, that what I really like is that whole idea that you brought up before that this mother is insane. People think that she's off the wall because she just is her own person. And that this has happened with women so often. I love the way you capture that, that there was really, she was just a creative, interesting person. But they make her out to be that there's something wrong because she's different.

And being different is so hard for people to absorb and take in. They're threatened by it. Tell me. Absolutely. May, tell me why. Well, tell our listeners, what is different about Sadie? I think mainly the fact that she has a vision for herself that doesn't just include being a housewife and a mother. She has this big dream or she had a big dream to go to New York and to study art. And then her parents died in a car wreck and that dream sort of withered on the

vine and she got married, but she's still nursing this artistic dream in her backyard and her art shed. And she makes these very intricate batiks and she reads Gertrude Stein and she's just sort of an out of the box thinker. And then she also, so she just, and her husband is, he's abusive. And so she just is really, you know, pushing boundaries boundaries pushing buttons she's right before her death she was supposed to have her first art show at the local you know museum or whatever and so is that the reason she got killed you know there's there's it's she's just a like a dangerous woman in terms of coloring outside of her you know follow up on what you're saying before I lose the thought. With me, in addition to May Cobb, who has written this really incredible book, A Likeable Woman. Karen Stark, there's so much packed into what May Cobb just said.

Okay, so her parents die, and there goes her financial possibilities, pursuing her dream of becoming an artist or studying art. She marries. The husband turns out to be abusive. Somehow, this woman, Sadie, manages to nurture that dream. And that is the cord that really struck with me. I mean, regardless of her circumstances, she has found a way

to keep that dream alive. And then just before her, I guess, showing her exhibition, she's found dead. And one thing, this is not a good choice. Very often, we don't have a good choice. There's no good alternative in a lot of scenarios. But the daughter comes back, gets this memoir written, she believes, or it's presented as written by her mother about her whole life. The daughter had no idea about what she was reading. And here are the two bad choices. Your mother was either

murdered or your mother committed suicide. I don't like either choice, but I would rather my mom be murdered if I had to pick one of those horrible things, if I had to go through life without my mother, because I wouldn't want to believe that my mother chose to leave me. So you've got this amazing woman who's considered unhinged, nurturing a dream that is either murder or commit suicide. Now, it's not a very good choice, is it, Karen Stark, to want to pick, I'd rather my mom be murdered than commit suicide? Well, if you think about it, Nancy, people who have a parent that committed suicide,

just as you said, they really never get over the fact that not only did they lose their parent, but that their parent chose to leave them. And it becomes personal, like, what did I do? Why wasn't I able to stop my mom from doing that? So it's on your shoulder. It's a burden for the rest of your life. So even though it's terrible that somebody would be murdered, it's a lot better to think that they had no control over the circumstances than to believe that they

chose to leave you. I can't imagine carrying that horrible burden around. I mean, I know if my father could have, he would have stayed with me till the very end, but he passed away. I don't know how I would cope with a thought that he chose to leave his children and wife. There's a lot to figure out in this book, Mae, a lot. And then you've got Kira's sister. Didn't she say something along the lines of the world is better off without her? Yes, exactly. And that's, so just piggybacking on what y'all are saying, that was Kira's whole thrust of sort of never believing the suicide line. She was like, there's no way, because she was so close to her mom and she was out there making art with her

and learning from her and they were besties and connected in a way that her mom wasn't to her sister. So she was like, no way this woman at the prime, you know, of her life when she's about to have the show would do this to me, would do this to herself. But yeah, but the sister's a whole different story. She was closer to the dad and was, I would say, ashamed of the mom. So yeah, it's probably of the mom. So, yeah. Why? Ashamed of what? Just her being a little more free-spirited and maybe she dresses different, dresses different than the other women. How does she dress?

She likes to wear like sort of long flowing, you know, dresses. Sometimes she doesn't wear a bra. Oh, dear Lord in heaven. Just very bohemian. I just want to add to that, that it's really so true that when you're young, what you want is the same as everyone. You don't want to stand out as being different. You want to belong. And my mother was a violinist and she would go for violin lessons. And I would be really embarrassed because I wanted her to be like all the other mothers. I didn't want her to be carrying a violin case and doing something that was different. You've kept a secret from me. I didn't know you thought that about your mother.

I did. And I remember it so clearly. I know that you don't judge anybody, but I'm totally know you thought that about your mother. I did, and I remember it so clearly. I know that you don't judge anybody, but I'm totally judging you. That was wrong, young lady. I never get to say that to my daughter, Lucy, because I'm afraid I'll mess her head up. But now I can say to you, that was so wrong, Karen Stark. But that's what's so striking about it is you realize when you get to be older how wrong that was. And here's somebody who understands that her mother is different but accepts it where her sister can't deal with it.

That's quite the dichotomy, Mae. You've got one sister embarrassed of the mother, and you've got Kira who's trying to find out what really happened to mother. Yeah, yeah. I really wanted to play with that sort of, you know, dysfunctional family dynamic or that there's battle lines drawn where the sister's more in line with the dad and Kira's more in line with the mom. Because I think that happens in families sometimes. And then, then we find out the mom, Sadie, I love that name, by the way, that you picked, had a sex affair. Yes. Okay, the walls really are crashing down now. Yes. Okay, the walls really are crashing down now. Yes, she, and that's part of her journey in becoming like her own woman, is that she meets this man who's just moved to town with his wife,

who's very overbearing. Who is she? Sadie. So Sadie is having this affair with this man, Mike, who's just moved to town. And he's more like her. He's kindred spirit. He was like a professor in Dallas and his wife is overbearing and he's also unhappy in his marriage. So their relationship begins and it's just beginning. Crime Stories with Nancy. Karen Stark, psychologist joining us in addition to the awesome

makeup, author of A Likeable Woman on Amazon Now. Karen, it's so easy to judge people that have an affair.

Yes, it's wrong. I know it's wrong and i don't even want to consider the fact that my husband david could ever do that no way because i think he's perfect but a what do you do when you find out and there's no way to talk to your mother about it because she's passed away about your mother having an affair and the the other thing is, I think sometimes, and I don't know because I don't plan on having an affair, because that could cut into my time with the twins if my husband were to get 50% custody. Plus, I love David. Sometimes I think people have affairs. You're the shrink, not me, Karen. Not because

they are in love with the other person or because they want to hurt their spouse. It's something in them. They're unhappy and they're seeking happiness or fulfillment in any way they can find it.

Regardless of the damage it can do. Oh, without a doubt. Nancy, that's a great assessment. And that's exactly what happened. I don't even know what I just said. I would be hard-pressed to repeat it. No, but you're right. What you just said is that they're unhappy, and sometimes that's the only way that they

could feel that they had any kind of connection in this case especially because this woman is so different than everyone else and a victim of domestic abuse exactly yes and this is not the answer an affair sex fair is not the answer in fact i think that it's like a symptom of something else wrong but But I'm just thinking about the mother. I mean, I know your book is about Kira and her investigation and her fear, her very legitimate fear and the threats on her about a mystery that's long been put to bed

many, many years ago when the mom died. But there's just so much going on with her. And I feel that we can identify with so much of what Kira is going through. Yeah, I really wanted to have her spend a lot of time reading those pages and trying to piece it together. And she has to do it, you know, with this party going on with these people who don't really like her either or approve of her almost in the way that her mother wasn't approved of. Like she's the only single one there, you know,

everyone else has already married off And she too is an artist, even though her life has been stunted by really survivor's guilt. So it's instrumental that she finds out what happened to her mom so she can move on too and live her full life. But yeah, so she is not only reacting to, you know, these secrets that her mom held, but then also actively trying to find out who killed her mom and why am I getting if anybody killed her mom? Yes. If anyone killed her mom, that's correct. Yeah. And she, go ahead. She has to cope with finding out that her mother had an affair, which no matter how much you think that you know your parents, something like that is devastating. You have to make sense of it.

Let me tell you a true story. You're going to love this. A friend of David's, this is so funny, the mom and the dad and the son and the daughter are at the breakfast table. And the son's sitting there eating cereal. And somehow somebody mentions, and the daughter is like, I don't know, 13, 14. And it comes out that the mom had been married before in her youth, like in college or something, and got a fairly quick divorce. The daughter slams down her breakfast and goes, Mom, you didn't tell me?

And storms out of the room, goes to her room, slams the door, everything like shakes. And the son just keeps eating cereal. He couldn't care less. And the mom says, did you hear what I just said? I was married before i met your father he goes okay and just keeps hitting the same it's like some people that's a true story very differently to finding things out about your mother it's true

that's such a that's such a boy reaction. I made it here, so I don't care. But, you know, I know your book, which I love, A Likeable Woman by May Cobb, is about Kira going home, what could be more iconic than going home, and suspecting that her mother did not commit suicide. I know it's about Kira. But I am really fascinated with Sadie.

And all of her flaws. Like having the affair. Not just an affair. But an affair with a married man. And she's married. I mean like all the men in the world. You have to pick one that's married. That her attempt

to keep her artistic dream alive and in any way she can in her world in the confines, her self-perceived confines of her world trying to become an artist.

It just there's something very heartbreaking about Sadie. Yeah, there is. And I really appreciate that that resonated with you. I'm so happy to hear it. Sadie is a lot, she's inspired a lot by my own mother, who is an artist, but definitely had to, you know, do the mom thing and live in a small town. Like she was, she came down. Hey, us moms don't like it when you say the mom thing. Well, I mean, I'm a mom. Yeah, I'm a mom. Do you have two guinea pigs?

See, you don't understand suffering. Okay, Mae, you don't understand suffering until your 92-year-old mother lives with you and you have a cat, a dog, two guinea pigs, twins, and a husband. Okay, now. The guinea pigs would put me over the edge. They really do. So you were saying a mom who's very gifted artistically, as you say, in your vulgar way, doing the mom thing. In my East Texas way. But I like the fact that she has flaws. She has deep flaws. But yet, she's just such a beautiful, beautiful person. all the time and not be judged for it so harshly or the author judged for it so harshly.

So I really did want to play with that notion and have Sadie be full-bodied, be her own person. Yes, she's tragic, but like you said, she's driven to, you know, make her art against all the different, you know, constraints in her life. I've got so much to say because I know how the book ends. But I'm going to leave that to all of you guys. A Likeable Woman by May Cobb. It's intrigue.

It's mystery. It's riveting. The characters are very complex, sometimes likable and sometimes not very likable at all. But especially about Sadie, there's something really

beautiful about her spirit. And then there's Kira who will not stop even risking her own life to find out the truth. It's amazing. A likable woman on Amazon, well, and everywhere now.

May Cobb, I wish you the very best with your book and all your endeavors. Thank you so much, Nancy. Thank you so much for having me back on. It's just such an honor. Oh, gosh, thank you. And Karen Stark, I told you we needed a shrink, right? I may need further therapy after a full read of this book. Okay.

Guys, thank you. And please pick up A Likeable Woman. It's awesome. Bye, guys. This is an iHeart Podcast.