The Chaperone

This was an enjoyable enough book. Clearly Louise Brooks is the hook (I don't know that I would have read it without her mention, though I did read it for a book club, so who knows), but it's about Cora Carlisle, Louise's chaperone to New York in 1922. I wish, though, that Louise Brooks wasn't the hook. Cora's not a real person and so she's taken the place of Louise's real chaperone, Alice Mills. The book felt like Moriarty wanted to tell Cora's story but needed a reason for things to happen, so sort of shoehorned Louise in. It's not a bad book, I just don't understand why so many authors use a real person for their book and then fictionalize so much of it. Also, Moriarty really packed a lot in; I often felt like she should have just written a non-fiction book about the topics addressed because it could've been really interesting and wouldn't have felt so forced. I'm still glad I read it. It's definitely not a bad book, just not what I was expecting.