Review: Vixen by Jillian Larkin

Title: Vixen
Author: Jillian Larkin
Publisher: Delacorte
Publicatioin Date: December 14, 2010
Series: The Flappers #1
Links: Amazon | Goodreads
Source: Barnes & Noble First Look

Jazz . . . Booze . . . Boys . . .  It’s a dangerous combination.

Every girl wants what she can’t have.  Seventeen-year-old Gloria Carmody wants the flapper lifestyle—and the bobbed hair, cigarettes, and music-filled nights that go with it.  Now that she’s engaged to Sebastian Grey, scion of one of Chicago’s most powerful families, Gloria’s party days are over before they’ve even begun . . . or are they?

Clara Knowles, Gloria’s goody-two-shoes cousin, has arrived to make sure the high-society wedding comes off without a hitch—but Clara isn’t as lily-white as she appears.  Seems she has some dirty little secrets of her own that she’ll do anything to keep hidden. . . .

Lorraine Dyer, Gloria’s social-climbing best friend, is tired of living in Gloria’s shadow.  When Lorraine’s envy spills over into desperate spite, no one is safe.  And someone’s going to be very sorry. . . .

This book brings the 1920's alive:  the bobs, the dresses, the mobsters, prohibition, speakeasies.  When I received this book, I was expecting it to be a little bit froofy, and full of fluff and drama, with lots of flapper dresses and jazz and sayings like "the cat's meow".  And that stuff is in there, but it is also more than that, which became apparent once I had read the prologue.

The woman's place in American society is shifting in this time period.  And you feel that struggle in the characters of Gloria, Clara, and Lorraine.  They are desperately trying to find themselves, to find happiness, to find freedom.  The characters in this book are trying to reinvent themselves.  They all are concerned with their appearances, especially in relation to the persons that they are trying to become and/or trying to conceal.  They all have secrets!

Clara was my favorite character of the three girls, even though the book feels like it is mostly about Gloria.  Gloria felt a little bratty to me for a good bit of the book, but she was dynamic and by the end I admired her more than in the beginning.  Lorraine is pretty much an attention whore even though there were times when I really felt sorry for her.  Clara felt the most down to earth and real.  She was flawed, but not as dramatically as Lorraine, and she had some class to her but without being as selfish as Gloria.  She felt like the happy medium between the two extremes.

Vixen is glamorous and dangerous and fun and dramatic, and it also deals with some interesting and important stuff:  secrets, appearances, identity, freedom, and prejudice.