Easy by Tamara Webber
Publisher: Self Published
Pages: 304
Rating: 
A girl who believes trust can be misplaced, promises are made to be broken, and loyalty is an illusion. A boy who believes truth is relative, lies can mask unbearable pain, and guilt is eternal. Will what they find in each other validate their conclusions, or disprove them all?
When Jacqueline follows her longtime boyfriend to the college of his choice, the last thing she expects is a breakup two months into sophomore year. After two weeks in shock, she wakes up to her new reality: she’s single, attending a state university instead of a music conservatory, ignored by her former circle of friends, and failing a class for the first time in her life.
Leaving a party alone, Jacqueline is assaulted by her ex’s frat brother. Rescued by a stranger who seems to be in the right place at the right time, she wants nothing more than to forget the attack and that night–but her savior, Lucas, sits on the back row of her econ class, sketching in a notebook and staring at her. Her friends nominate him to be the perfect rebound.
When her attacker turns stalker, Jacqueline has a choice: crumple in defeat or learn to fight back. Lucas remains protective, but he’s hiding secrets of his own. Suddenly appearances are everything, and knowing who to trust is anything but easy.
So somebody told me this book was like Beautiful Disaster but not completely horrible, woman hating and nonsensical. I snorted, thanked them for the rec and went on my merry way.
So let me express this in the most calm and reasonable way I can. Easy by Tamara Webber is fantastic and wonderful and that person was 100% right.
I have to admit, the book and I didn’t get off to a great start. It begins with Jacqueline at college, bummed from getting dumped by her longterm boyfriend, almost getting raped before Lucas rescues her. So, for someone who is adamantly against rape being used and glossed over just to further a plot or have the hero seem heroic, I was decidedly unimpressed.
But it soon becomes clear that Webber has taken the topic of rape extremely seriously. In fact, by the end of the novel I was cheering and punching the air because this book was the best I’ve ever read an author handle the subject for contemporary readers.
Normally, in books where the female MC is almost raped and saved by the hero, the rapist gets beaten up and left behind and the heroine goes on her merry way. And sometimes the rapist harasses her and the author covers the trauma for the heroine until the rapist is killed by the hero in the final battle and those two get to run off into the sunset.
What a freakin’ relief that Webber takes it really damn seriously – even though the beginning of the novel would lead you to believe that she wouldn’t. There was a point near the end of the novel where Jacqueline has to talk to a bunch of sorority girls about rape and I wanted to cry and cheer and do a little girl power dance.
So I loved Jacqueline, I loved Lucas, I loved most of this book. I thought it was well written and reasonably well-paced and you know what? Seemed like it was actually written about college kids who actually do college things. I’m really glad I picked this one up. It was, indeed, a really fun, lovely read that I highly endorse. Also, Jacqueline’s slap down on Kennedy was epic – right to the end. She kicked serious butt.
Kat Kennedy
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[...] no spoiler to acknowledge that Easy opens with an attempted sexual assault. As other reviewers have commented, it’s deeply disquieting when books use rape as a plot device and move [...]