Dollface
Dollface is set amid the gangsters of Chicago in the Roaring ´20s, when Prohibition was raging and a good time was the sure cure for anything that ailed you. Eighteen-year-old Vera leaves home the first moment she can, determined to make her own way and find that good time. It doesn’t take long before the beauty attracts the attention of not one but two gangsters on opposite sides of the bootlegging business; once she falls pregnant, Vera chooses Shep Greene, whose relative stability and wealth bring her a sense of maturity. But underneath the façade, Vera still carries a torch for the hapless Tony, and when Shep finds himself jailed, she risks everything to enter the illegal trade herself. In a period of a few short years, life moves from dull and predictable to dangerous to just plain scary, and Vera has no idea how she reclaim any normalcy.
This book is riveting almost from the first few pages, and the flighty, often irritating Vera is still endearing as she tries to protect herself and her child in a world of guns and danger. Rosen’s use of fictional characters incorporated into the bootlegging world of Chicago brings the era perfectly to life; filled with violence, sex, betrayal and risk, this book is an excellent example of an historical New Adult story. Definitely a keeper.
