A Girl Like That is my latest novel being groomed in the stables for release in the spring. This time, the main character is someone you know--Elle McLarin--with her version of what happened in
The One, and so much more. Here is a brief summary:
What would you do if you were thirty-seven and
single with no family ties and a bad girl rep that you can’t live down? That’s
exactly the situation Elle McLarin finds herself in as A Girl Like That opens. Mean girl Elle McLarin desperately needs
to reinvent herself. Growing up with her grandparents in their small North
Carolina mountain community after her teenage mother, who named her for a
fashion magazine, ditched the idea of motherhood and disappeared, Elle found
her upbringing to be tougher than most. Add to that a near-tragic
mistake—drugging high school hunk Kyle Davis at a party, which landed her in
prison for a year—and Elle has long since paid her debt to society. Nineteen
years after being dubbed Badass Barbie in high school, and with her
grandparents now passed away and her illegitimate son joining the Army, Elle is
ready to pull up her bootstraps—and her roots—and courageously go where no one
will know her, or what she did.
In coastal
Wilmington, Elle opens a bakery called Bake My Day with the proceeds from
selling her grandmother’s cabin. Hoping to turn her life around, she still
struggles with her constant Good Elle/Bad Elle inner dialogue. But Elle’s
electric and budding new relationships help her to move outside of her head to
grow the possibilities that surround her if she can prune away the damaged
debris from her spirit. Then, just when her new life begins to take root, and
love could be a possibility for Elle, a remarkable event brings Elle into the
limelight, causing a jealous bystander to uncover Elle’s sordid past,
threatening to expose her and drag her under once more.
Told in the
first person, readers will get to hear Elle’s side of the story that began in
the pages of my first novel, The One.
Elle makes cameo appearances in the next two books of the series, though A Girl Like That is a stand-alone novel.
If you are meeting Elle for the first time, you may hate her initially, and
possibly grow to love her, but it is quite likely that you will not forget her!
Meet Mary Flinn at the following locations for your holiday book-buying:
