Book Review - Lola by Melissa Love

Lola by Melissa Love is about a young woman, Lola, finding her voice and leading her gang. The Crenshaw Six is a small but mighty gang in South Central LA. They have mostly kept to themselves but after a recent incident, they were dragged into a conflict with rival drug cartels. 

Most everyone believes that the gang is led by a man named Garcia. However, the gang knows who the real boss is. Lola, Garcia’s girlfriend, is the true gang’s leader and mastermind. She has a brilliant mind and plays the role of a submissive girlfriend, causing people to underestimate her. However, when her gang gets pulled into a war with another, Lola will need to step up if she wants to make sure her gang survives the fallout.

I was very excited to read about a woman leading a gang but found the book to be an okay read. Lola tries to come off as smarter than her peers but at times, she makes the dumbest mistakes. It was interesting at times to see how she handled the role of being a sister to one of the gang members and the girlfriend to another. I felt Lola wanted to be the face of the gang but then she kept pulling back. I wanted to see more examples of why she was the fearsome leader of the gang. 

I had a hard time connecting with any of the characters because they didn’t seem very well developed. The writing style took a bit to get into as it was repetitive and slow moving. Some parts of the book seemed far-fetched and unrealistic. For example, the little girl, Lucy, who Lola “adopts”, doesn’t know basic things like playing with dolls and basic self care or things a child her age should know, but is able to spot where the drugs are hidden. While Lucy's biological mother was an addict, does that make a toddler more able to find hidden drugs that even an adult couldn’t locate? I do get that the author was trying to hint that because Lucy had negligent parents allowed her to see things others didn’t but, I don’t know if it would be to the same extent as the novel described.  The book is the beginning of a series but the book didn’t hold my interest enough to continue reading the rest of the series.