Proceed With Caution:
This book contains kidnapping, murder, sexual assault, domestic abuse, racism, drugging, and discussions of dementia and child neglect/death.
The Basics:
Real Easy is set in 1999 in Fremont, Illinois, mostly centered around the Lovely Lady strip club. It has various POVs ranging from the dancers, their kids and partners, the cops, clients, and more. Our main perspectives are two of the dancers, Samantha and Georgia, the two lead detectives, and the murderer.
My Thoughts:
I was immediately interested in Real Easy because I'm obsessed with all things '90s and always get excited to see strippers in novels. Obviously, this meant I had to read it despite Crime Mystery not being my genre of choice.
I'll start with what I didn't enjoy about Real Easy: the writing style. It's very stilted and awkward. There's a distinct lack of contractions which made it feel clunky rather than flowing naturally. It took several chapters to get use to, but I never fully settled into it.
I also wasn't a fan of so many POVs. We have our main five, which were great, but then a whole bunch of one-off chapters. I do prefer multiple POVs but I've never liked one-off narrators. They're usually used to tell us something we wouldn't have known otherwise or to throw us off the culprit's trail. I'm not entirely sure the purpose here, but it was a lot. I did enjoy some of these perspectives, but I kept wanting to get back to our mains!
The plot of Real Easy kept me engaged though. I had to know who took Samantha and why! What is he going to do to her!? Why aren't the cops doing more?! Why do men feel so entitled to women, especially sex workers?! They don't owe you anything, bro! It all started with Samantha offering to drive another dancer home after she was roofied, only to be run off the road. Who was following them?! Why did they kill Jade?! Where is Samantha being held?! Tell me!
Real Easy also has a nice diverse cast. Samantha is intersex. A couple of the girls are Black, some are queer. Georgia in particular is biracial and I totally felt her irritation at ignorant people.
In the end, I enjoyed Real Easy despite it not being my usual type of read. The ending was a bit underwhelming. We learned who it was, and then he was just arrested. I wanted more of a bang!