Author: Radhika Sanghani
Publication Date: November 3, 2015
Published: Berkley
Source: NetGalley
My Rating:
Ellie used to be a virgin, but now she’s a woman with sexual experience. Well, some sexual experience. She also has debt, an unpaid magazine internship, and three flatmates who left her with the single room to match her single status.
That’s okay. She doesn’t want a boyfriend anyway—she wants several. And if the sex is exciting enough, her ruthless magazine editor boss can exploit her dating life for a column.
After countless hook-ups, a disastrously fiery encounter with some heat lube, and one orgasm class, Ellie is faced with the sad reality of her sexual ineptitude. But when she starts to witness the emotional wreckage she’s leaving in her wake, Ellie realizes that sex can be hard, and there’s a down side to giving it up too easy.
This is a completely different Ellie than the one we met in VIRGIN. She’s moved on from her virginal days and is ready to explore her sexuality, and when I says explore, I mean Ellie wants to bang everything in sight, referring to this as her “slutty phase”, which I'll touch on in a bit.
When we left Ellie last she had lost her V-card to the worst of the worst, contracting the clap and trying to find some clarity. For the record, she doesn't let you forget that she caught an STD. In fact, I'm fairly certain that she told everyone within a two mile radius. But, that's the type of awkward character she is. There are moments, in fact, where Ellie is so awkward that I had to put the book down to recover from secondhand embarrassment. While I did suffer some of that while reading VIRGIN, something about this felt doubly uncomfortable. Perhaps because, even though she's only a year older, I expected to see some growth in maturity. If anything it only got worse. I had a hard time relating to her. We all go through stages of self exploration, but Ellie’s so naive that I felt she hindered her own progress. She had an excuse before. She was meant to be clumsy and inexperienced. Here it made her feel shallow, despite her own lack of self-confidence.
Now that we’ve concluded that I'm not a fan of Ellie, let me tell you what I did love. Firstly, this book made me smile. If you're ever having a bad day, pick up this chick lit; it’s balls-to-the-wall hilarious. There is no other character who does good awkward quite like Ellie. The book does start with her on a quest for as much casual sex as she can find, but she quickly learns that she has trouble being satisfied and looks for ways to remedy it. Her boss gets wind of some of her excursions and puts her to work—for free, as an intern—on a column about her encounters. Naturally this causes problems, but the journey taken is comedic. Radhika Sanghani has a beautiful sense of humor. Secondly, Nick and Emma. Why she was using this man is beyond my realm of understanding. He was genuinely a nice guy and he went above and beyond for her. And Emma was a genuine friend, with a lot of good insight. It was her that wanted to redefine the word ‘slut’, an idea that I can stand behind. See, I was fine with Ellie wanting to get laid. I like the idea that what's right for you may not be right for your neighbor, and it's no one’s prerogative what goes on inside your bedroom. I loved Emma for standing behind her on this.
This book wasn't all laughs and awkward and momentary pauses, however. There were some very raw moments. Ellie doesn't always make the right decisions and there are points where you wish she were standing in front of you so you can grab her by the arms, shake her, and question, “Why would you do that? What is wrong with you?” Friendships were tested, relationships severed, hearts broken. A good balance of emotional elements.
While I didn't like Not As Easy as much as VIRGIN, I appreciate Sanghani’s writing and do look forward to her future works.
Now that we’ve concluded that I'm not a fan of Ellie, let me tell you what I did love. Firstly, this book made me smile. If you're ever having a bad day, pick up this chick lit; it’s balls-to-the-wall hilarious. There is no other character who does good awkward quite like Ellie. The book does start with her on a quest for as much casual sex as she can find, but she quickly learns that she has trouble being satisfied and looks for ways to remedy it. Her boss gets wind of some of her excursions and puts her to work—for free, as an intern—on a column about her encounters. Naturally this causes problems, but the journey taken is comedic. Radhika Sanghani has a beautiful sense of humor. Secondly, Nick and Emma. Why she was using this man is beyond my realm of understanding. He was genuinely a nice guy and he went above and beyond for her. And Emma was a genuine friend, with a lot of good insight. It was her that wanted to redefine the word ‘slut’, an idea that I can stand behind. See, I was fine with Ellie wanting to get laid. I like the idea that what's right for you may not be right for your neighbor, and it's no one’s prerogative what goes on inside your bedroom. I loved Emma for standing behind her on this.
This book wasn't all laughs and awkward and momentary pauses, however. There were some very raw moments. Ellie doesn't always make the right decisions and there are points where you wish she were standing in front of you so you can grab her by the arms, shake her, and question, “Why would you do that? What is wrong with you?” Friendships were tested, relationships severed, hearts broken. A good balance of emotional elements.
While I didn't like Not As Easy as much as VIRGIN, I appreciate Sanghani’s writing and do look forward to her future works.
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