Review #82: Dollface, by Renee Rosen

Vera Abramowitz is a young girl living in Chicago in the middle of the roaring 20s, determined to have a better, more glamorous life than the one her mother has lived as the head of Abramowitz Meats. Chicago in the 20s means speakeasies and prohibition, Al Capone and the Charleston, North Side versus South Side, and the St. Valentine's Day massacre.

Vera falls in love and gets married to a North Side gangster, but she's still inexplicably, and dangerously, drawn to a South Sider, and in between shopping and lunching and dancing, she finds herself sneaking into hotel rooms and running booze while her husband is locked up. She brings the reader in to her world of gin and dancing and mob molls, and seems to live almost a double life as the mother of a young baby, as a member of the Jewish Ladies Club, as arm candy for her husband.

The entire time I read this book, I felt like Vera was hurtling herself towards disaster. She knew it, I knew it, and we were both powerless to stop it. This was an interesting read, and I'm curious to see what Rosen does next.