Dollface

A Novel of the Roaring Twenties

By: Renée Rosen

Narrated by: Rebekkah Ross

America in the 1920s was a country alive with the wild fun of jazz, speakeasies, and a new kind of woman - the flapper.

Vera Abramowitz is determined to leave her gritty childhood behind and live a more exciting life, one that her mother never dreamed of. Bobbing her hair and showing her knees, the lipsticked beauty dazzles, doing the Charleston in nightclubs and earning the nickname “Dollface”.

As the ultimate flapper, Vera captures the attention of two high rollers, a handsome nightclub owner and a sexy gambler. On their arms, she gains entrée into a world filled with bootleg bourbon, wailing jazz, and money to burn. She thinks her biggest problem is choosing between them until the truth comes out. Her two lovers are really mobsters from rival gangs during Chicago’s infamous Beer Wars, a battle Al Capone refuses to lose.

The heady life she’s living is an illusion resting on a bedrock of crime and violence unlike anything the country has ever seen before. When the good times come to an end, Vera becomes entangled in everything from bootlegging to murder. And as men from both gangs fall around her, Vera must put together the pieces of her shattered life, as Chicago hurtles toward one of the most infamous days in its history, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

©2013 Renée Rosen (P)2021 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"Dollface is as intoxicating as the forbidden liquor at the heart of it. Rosen’s Chicago gangsters are vividly rendered, and the gun molls stir up at least as much trouble as their infamous men. Fans of Boardwalk Empire will love Dollface. I know I did." (Sara Gruen, New York Times best-selling author of Water For Elephants)

“With the rat-a-tat tempo of a Tommy gun, Rosen delivers a smart and snappy shot of Roaring Twenties drama.” (Booklist)

“Renee Rosen has combined her daring and vivid imagination with the rich history of Prohibition-era Chicago. Dollface is a lively, gutsy, romp of a novel that will keep you turning pages.” (Karen Abbott, New York Times best-selling author of Sin in the Second City)

Excellent book

A fun read that is easy to listen to Compared to most of the books I have listened to here

Chicago in the 1920’s!

This book had a wonderful story line set in Chicago 1920’s. I found it easy to connect with the characters. The book was easy to follow and was a wonderful listen. I highly recommend!

So much fun!

I need to find another book like this. I enjoyed it so much. Worth the credit!

Great Listen!

I loved hearing the story of Chicago's Prohibition era and dynamics of navigating its life. Hated to put this on pause!

4 stars

I love the roaring twenties and love historical fiction. I enjoyed the book although felt it was a bit long and the main character got annoying after a while due to her back and forth of emotions. Overall not my favorite book by this author but thought it was pretty good.

Couldn’t bring myself to finish it…

I picked up one of the Gilded Age novels written by Renee Rosen and thoroughly enjoyed it. Based on that experience, I decided to go through and read all of her novels. It has been hit, or miss. This one, DOLLFACE, is a miss for me. It is well written. Rosen does an excellent job of describing characters and settings in a way that makes the reader feel like they are right there. This was just a little too extra for me. Too many gangsters, too much crime, too much glamorizing of crime, too much graphic sex between the leading character and multiple men. Again, and I have said this about this author’s characters before, not a lot to like or root for!! I read up through the 8th chapter and then I skipped to the end and read the authors notes and the last chapter and that pretty much did it for me. 18-year-old Jewish girl from a hard-working family seeks a better, more glamorous life than the one she grew up in. A cute little teenager living in the fast lane of 1920 Chicago takes up with two gangsters from two rival gangs. She finds herself right in the middle of it all, culminating in the Valentine’s Day massacre. We are both are killed. I learned from the last chapter that at some . she finds herself pregnant from one of them. They both die so she becomes a single mother at a time in life when it would be difficult for any woman. Her loving mother takes her in and helps her get back on her feet and she puts her life back together again as the 1920s rages into the Great Depression of the 1930s. If gangster-era, Chicago is your thing, my take is that this book provides a blow by blow into the bootlegging, and back-alley goings on‘s of the wettest county in the country! But if bootlegging, violence, gangster culture, and page after page of reading about an 18-year-old, consort with men almost twice her age and making really stupid choices is not your thing, take a hard pass.

Enjoyable but dragged a bit

It was an enjoyable story but the action got repetitive. I found myself tuning out parts as they were similar to previous action. Affair sex, followed by guilt, decision to stop, try to be a good wife,, then return to afternoon lover and repeat, repeat, repeat.
The basic story line was good but could have been told more succinctly. I did learn more about Chicago gangs during prohibition.

Unsympathetic characters

The narrator was a good narrator, but she wouldn’t have been my pick for this character/time period - too soft and didn’t speak like someone from a “gritty” background.

I enjoyed the parts at the beginning with the Roaring 20’s clubs and flappers. But that all ended suddenly and without me really growing to care for Vera or understand her what drove her relationships. There was nothing helping me sympathize for her or struggle with liking her or the men in her life despite the immorality. I just didn’t get attached, so I didn’t feel much emotion during the book (except disgust in a few scenes) - no excitement, no sadness, no real fear bc i could see where things were leading.

“Dollface”: Save your points and $

I wouldn’t recommend this book even if it was free. The overall rating is just average. The narrator redeems the thin overworked storyline for the female characters but the male character voices sounded almost comical. It was very difficult to sympathise with the protagonist. In fact, I almost disliked her and not in a villainous- dislike way. The plot is cheesy and exaggerated. I feel the time spent listening to this was wasted.

Not for the faint of stomach

A well told story about a fictional gun moll and her exploits in Prohibition era Chicago. I could have done with a little less graphic gore, fair warning.