I requested this book because I absolutely loved May Cobb's previous work The Hunting Wives. My Summer Darlings though, leaves a bit to be desired, I think. Honestly, with friends like Kittie and Cynthia, Jen doesn't need enemies. It was almost stomach turning to watch the utter betrayal unfold. It did feel a little predictable though, and I wish she had delved a bit more into Will's past. I also wish the book had taken place over a longer period of time, because it only took place over a matter of six weeks, a little less actually. Making it a bit unbelieveable.

Thank you to Berkley Publishing for my gifted eARC of “My Summer Darlings” by May Cobb. I really think it is destined to become THE beach/poolside read of the summer.
May’s debut “The Hunting Wives” was one of my favorites of 2021. I had very high hopes for “My Summer Darlings” — which I think can put too much pressure on a book — but it still ended up being a five-star read for me.
“My Summer Darlings” takes us back to East Texas, where we meet lifelong friends and neighbors Kittie, Jen and Cynthia. They’re pushing 40; Jen is newly divorced and the other two are married. But all three are quickly smitten with newcomer Will Harding, a sexy, mysterious dude with an air of European sophistication. All three become obsessed with him, and they’re pitted against each other when Will abruptly loses interest in each woman.
This book was delicious. I can’t think of any other word for it. It was the book equivalent of a frozen cocktail, and I kept wishing I were devouring it at the beach :beach_with_umbrella: It was darkness mixed with “Desperate Housewives”-esque drama. If “The Hunting Wives” was a little too dark for you, I think you’d be OK with this one. I think “My Summer Darlings” is going to have very widespread appeal.

May Cobb is the queen of creating vile characters who will have you glued to your seat. You can't stop reading, you shirk all responsibilities as you devour the pages. It's an addiction, a guilty pleasure and I couldn't get enough.

Three women are mesmerized by their new neighbor Will. He is a real charmer, a true lady's man. The women seemingly lose their minds in his presence. As one unthinkable act after another occurs, you have no idea what will happen next. It's a train wreck and you can't look away.

This book is getting published just in time for vacation/beach/pool season. You'll want a relaxed setting, plenty of uninterrupted reading time available and possibly a glass of wine, few shots of tequila or a fancy cocktail. My Summer Darlings has all the makings of a perfect summer read - a fast paced mix of drama, romance & suspense with a dash of steam and a whole serving of secrets.

I prefer going into my reading adventures with just a general sense of genre/vibe so I'll stick with type of overview for the sake of other readers like me. Welcome to Cedartown, wealthy, beautiful suburbia where everyone knows each other...or do they? Lives of 3 female friends get affected in unexpected ways by their new neighbour, a charming, attractive and mysterious Will Harding. Passions and obsessions are ignited, loyalties tested and deep, dark secrets seem to be lurking around every corner.

This was such a fun page-turner! I loved the gossipy vibe, all the intrigue, and not necessarily likeable but extremely entertaining characters who kept getting themselves into some outlandish situations. I am already excited to find out what May Cobb comes up with next!

A huge thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing for gifting me an ARC of this fun read in exchange for an honest review!

I would consider May Cobb a "fun" thriller writer. Nothing to knock but, somehow, not knocking it out of the park for me. The friend like elements are always fun and I find them devourable, but overall not impressive.

May Cobb is back with another crime thriller set in East Texas with rich adults behaving badly. If you liked her last book, The Hunting Wives, you'll like this one as well. If you didn't like that one, it's probably best to pass. It's very Real Housewives meets Witches of Eastwick (minus the fantasy elements). There's drama, too much drinking, infidelity, back-stabbing, gossip and a handsome stranger who moves into this small town. Like, The Hunting Wives, there's also some open-door scenes.

At the beginning of the book, we're teased with a scene from a character fearing for her life while tied up in the woods. From there, we back up a few weeks and meet recently-divorced Jen, queen bee in the midst of a mid-life crisis Kittie and bored Cynthia trying therapy for the first time. All three grew up together and now have teenagers roughly the same age. All are privileged and ripe for excitement when really, really ridiculously good looking Will moves into the neighborhood.

Thank you to Berkely Publishing and Netgalley for the electronic advanced copy.

Another action-packed suspense thriller from May Cobb, author of The Hunting Wives. In this novel three thirty-something friends since childhood, Jen, Kittie and Cynthia are muddling through their middle-age comparing notes on child rearing, enjoying drinks together and gossiping about their fellow small-town neighbors. But the routine they’ve been accustomed to is shaken out of whack when Will Harding comes to town acting as both an enticement and a threat to the three women who each want to be in the glow of his affection. Full of fun twists and turns, reading this novel actually tasted like summer. Thank you to NetGalley and to Berkeley for the advanced review copy.

Jen, Cynthia & Kittie have been friends since childhood, all growing up in the Eden Place neighborhood. As adults, they settled back into the neighborhood they grew up in. Enter a handsome new eligible bachelor neighbor and these ladies cannot get enough. The ladies of Eden Place are practically falling at Will's feet.

This book is a suburban drama along the lines of Desperate Houswives. Rich people behaving badly, lies, manipulation and scandal abound in this book by May Cobb.

I really enjoyed this book. It is the perfect neighborhood drama. It kept my interest. I was invested in these three ladies' stories and friendship. Eden Place sounded like the perfect place to live, until it wasn't.

3.5

I received a gifted galley of MY SUMMER DARLINGS by May Cobb for an honest review. Thank you to Berkley Publishing Group and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review!

MY SUMMER DARLINGS follows three women in alternating chapters. Jen is a newly divorced woman who has moved back to her hometown with her teenaged son where her family’s money is able to keep her afloat until she gets her life back together. Returning home has allowed her to reconnect with two old friends, Kittie and Cynthia, both of whom are married with a teenager of their own. It is soon clear that none of them are supremely happy in their lives.

Will is the new man in town. He’s rich and gorgeous and everyone is quickly obsessed. Jen seems the obvious match being the only single friend, but the obsession isn’t Jen’s alone. This is a neighborhood all about secrets and gossip, but there’s a lot more going on beneath the surface.

If you’re the type of reader who needs to read about compelling and likeable characters, this probably isn’t the book for you. This book is very much the train wreck that you can’t look away from. The main story is told through flashbacks from a few weeks ago, but we get glimpses of the present where things have gone horribly wrong. I can’t say I particularly liked any of the characters (this book embodies the exact opposite of friendship and relationship goals), but I still needed answers about what happened!

The ending left me feeling a bit like there were unanswered questions about why things went down the way they did, but I think this is a book probably best left without asking too many questions. This is a book for those looking for a quick read with some dark twists.

5 STARS!

This was such a fun read! I love books that center around rich, suburban moms behaving badly! I could not get enough of this book! Three women obsessed and fighting over the new, mysterious, sexy man in the neighborhood?! Yes, please! This book had it all - adult mean girls, backstabbing, affairs, gossip, some spice, and lots of wine drinking! There is also a thriller element to the story that I loved. I devoured this scandalous entertaining read!

This is the perfect, sexy summer read everyone will be talking about!

BE FORWARNED, reading this book will cause you to drink a lot of wine! It did that to me! I could NOT put my wine glass down! Wine and this book go hand in hand!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for my e-ARC.

This wasn’t the thriller I was expecting. First, every single character was unlikable. There was not growth, no depth, and no redeeming qualities so it was difficult to connect. The women were just awful in every way!

The plot was a bit slow and predictable at times. The ending was definitely packed with action but again this felt predictable and almost comical in the way it unfolded.

Overall, this was a miss for me.

I still haven't read The Hunting Wives(my bad), so when I got the chance to read an early copy of My Summer Darlings, I grabbed it with both of my book-loving hands! The three main characters, Jen, Kittie, and Cynthia provide the POVs for almost the entire story. Until a surprise( to me at least) character, jumps into the deep end of the pool and provides some additional information. I was thinking that at this point, everything wrapped up nicely, but to be honest, these women do everything possible to ensure they are the most selfish, entitled, greedy, backstabbers imaginable. The cherry on the top(love the cover), they have been best friends for years! Yep, this is one of those times when none of them needed enemies since they have each other to run over.
When a new man, Will, moves to town, Jen the only divorced one of the 'Terrible Three'( my nickname for them) is smitten and thinks she and Will are perfect together. Just saying that this group is around forty years old, but never learned the difference between instalove and lust. Surprising no one, Kittie, and Cynthia are also very attracted to Will. Husbands and children be damned, all three of them know that they are the perfect person for Will to choose.
But neither of them would do anything to hurt their best friend or their family right? Just a little harmless flirting I am sure. Not! Things go from bad to worse rather quickly and all I will say is Will Harding, you might have bitten off more than you can chew in this small town with these women. If you enjoy domestic drama with a hint of mystery and a lot ( and I mean A LOT) of mayhem, I can think of many worse ways to spend a summer afternoon. Such a fun page flipper and I was surprised again and again at what these women thought was acceptable behavior!

In this suburban drama we have our three longtime “best friends” who are all vying for the attention of their mysteriously handsome new neighbor, Will.

Jen, a recently divorced mother, is struggling to make ends meet in both her financial and romantic life.

Cynthia, daughter of generational wealth and wife to her longtime husband, feels stuck in her marriage wishes to spice things up.

Kittie, the constantly wine-drunk neighborhood socialite, always seems to think she has her friend’s “best interests” in mind, while juggling her rebel daughter and placating husband.

This was an incredibly slow burn, which I am not a fan of when it comes to books labeled as “thrillers.” The real drama didn’t really pick up until about 40% in. I thought about DNFing this one multiple times. I loathed all of the characters and found myself not caring about what happened to any of them.

The ending was incredibly overdramatic and laughable. Definitely not sure if I want to read The Hunting Wives now since many of the problems I had with this one were also what others disliked in THW. But, if you did enjoy The Hunting Wives, then you’ll probably enjoy this one as well.

Thank you to @NetGalley and @BerkleyPub for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Review of My Summer Darlings by May Cobb

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I find myself agreeing with a few of the reviews I’ve read of this one. What did I just read? Whoa. Just whoa. This book is a wild ride of debauchery. Mean girls, toxic relationships and all the 🍆. I believe I blushed at times while reading this book. I do not recommend for the faint of heart 😂 it definitely kept me reading and entertained and one thing is for sure: this author will always surprise me. And this book was a compulsive read for me.

Quick synopsis:

Jen, Kittie, and Cynthia have been friends since childhood and all live in the same neighborhood in their hometown. Jen has recently moved back after divorcing her husband due to his infidelities. An even newer addition to the neighborhood, a man named Will has caught Jen’s eye and she immediately decides to pursue him. The trouble is that a man like Will is likely to catch the eye of many women. And no one really knows anything about him.

A big thank you to @netgalley and @berkley for an advanced copy of this one. I

Someone lese called this a guilty pleasure and I'd have to agree. Three girlfriends since High School are reunited in their small Texas town when Jen gets divorced and moves back from Austin. Kittie has always been the ring leader and Cynthia is quiet and goes along.

First of all, Kittie obviously has a drinking problem along with self-esteem issues. When new-guy Will moves into the neighborhood, all three take a liking to him in different ways. But Will has secrets and none of them really know him.

Kittie is also dealing with a 16 year old daughter who now gets the attention that she used to get, and she doesn't handle it well; lots of mother-daughter issues. Jen has a son about the same age who misses his dad who is still in Austin and latches onto Will as a dad figure, something Jen encourages and has fantasies about.

The sex scenes are well done, thus, this book will not be in our HS library. The book starts out with one of women , we don't know who till later in the book, tied up and being beat up by Will. So, we know he's bad news from the get go. The mystery is more who it is and will they survive.

the thriller part was well written and suspenseful, it's just that there were times in the book when I couldn't help but feel like all these women were idiots and living in dream worlds. Two of the women had been married for a couple decades but would throw their whole lives away for a man they barely knew. And, they were all willing to screw their friends over for him. I prefer stronger women characters.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for this honest review.

what started off as a fun, sexy, enticing southern drama, turned into something a bit cringey and disappointing for me. i was obsessed with the juicy characters at the start: 40 year old women who grew up together in a rich part of texas now spend their afternoons drinking wine and gossiping by their pools every day. but when the plot started to twist, my attraction started to fade. the “thriller” part of the story just wasn’t believable and felt redundant. i almost wish there was no murder at all, so it could’ve stayed a southern drama novel. if you enjoyed the hunting wives by this author, you’ll enjoy the first half of my summer darlings. but i’m not sold on the second half sadly.

I was so thrilled to get an eARC of this book. I couldn’t wait to read it. This cover is gorgeous and the book was being hyped as a big summer thriller. But unfortunately My Summer Darlings was completely awful. I’m just unsure if it deserves 1 star or 2 stars.
The characters were all horrible. All they did was drink and gossip and cheat on their husbands. The plot was super slow and when something finally happens it somehow manages to be both absolutely predictable and utterly ridiculous.

At first it was hard to keep track of who was whom character wise with the different POVs (Jen, Kittie, Cynthia and the POV of someone that gets abducted) as the story keeps unfolding more drama keeps piling up and keeps sucking you in! This was a great thriller/ mystery. The pages are definitely filled with drama, lust and some desperate housewives.

My Summer Darlings by May Cobb is a suspenseful mystery thriller that pulls you in from the beginning and holds your attention until the very end. This is an extremely entertaining book, and May Cobb didn’t disappoint. I look forward to reading more from this author.

Sometimes you just have to go there. My Summer Darlings is a delicious read. Three friends get together weekly and gossip about the neighborhood. Until Will moves in. Each friend has the hots for him. Will is a true fiend and lothario. Just how much is revealed slowly. Which friend lies to which other friend? Who scores with Will and who doesn’t? And just when the crescendo is about to occur, a new fly in the ointment emerges.
I enjoyed this devilish read. It’s a great summer beach read.