Successful Manhattan advertising writer, Rose Perry, follows her dream of becoming a newspaper columnist during the early days of the Iraq War. Money, love, and safety are soon put on the line.
Quarter Finalist
Assessment:
Plot: Rose Perry, rising star at a prestigious Manhattan advertising firm, is dismayed to be handed the account of her nightmares—promoting a political candidate who stands for everything she and her family oppose. Will she sell out for the big bucks and the bling, or will she choose the harder path?
Prose/Style: Stone writes with the ease and grace of one who has walked in her heroine's shoes on the same Manhattan sidewalks. A book in which everything happens as it must, yet nothing is predictable.
Originality: Peace, Love and Cockroaches is a novel about integrity—personal, political, and ideological. It also broaches the important theme of women and the complexities of the career and relationship choices they face in the twenty-first century.
Character Development/Execution: One of the pleasures of this novel is Rose's realistic yielding to the temptations that beset a young, ambitious woman in New York City, and her gain in stature as she learns from her missteps. Rose is repeatedly tested in her ability to stay true to herself and her values, and the result is a complex and thoroughly believable protagonist, as well as a plot that avoids pat solutions and trite outcomes.
Date Submitted: August 30, 2021
