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Thanks to the publisher and libro.fm for a complimentary audio copy!
Real Easy is Marie Rutkoski's adult debut. Her fantasy book The Midnight Lie was one of my favorites of 2021 (didn't love the sequel as much but that's ok) so I was curious how she'd do writing a gritty crime thriller after a dystopian fantasy.
Spoiler alert: she did pretty damn good.
Her writing style in this story is very different than what I've read from her before, but it still has the great characterization I loved previously. I described this to a friend as reading like an episode of Law and Order: SVU. We get multiple, multiple POVs (all in third person) and they all revolve around everyone's relation to a crime victim.
The crime in question is the murder of a stripper named Lady Jade, and the disappearance of Ruby, another stripper. They left the club together one night, had their car spun out, and it was found later, starting an investigation into the crime.
Basically we just get a deep dive into these women, the people who knew them, the people who loved them, the people investigating what happened to them, and even the person who attacked them.
There's not too much to say about this one outside of the characterization being good and the format being interesting - it's diverse enough, with characters of quite a few races and sexualities. It's set in the 90s, so that made it interesting - no social media or smartphones that make solving crimes marginally easier these days.
I'm not the hugest fan of where this story ended up going... but that's realism for ya. It was a really good book, regardless of the story, and I'd definitely read more adult novels from Rutkoski.
Real Easy is Marie Rutkoski's adult debut. Her fantasy book The Midnight Lie was one of my favorites of 2021 (didn't love the sequel as much but that's ok) so I was curious how she'd do writing a gritty crime thriller after a dystopian fantasy.
Spoiler alert: she did pretty damn good.
Her writing style in this story is very different than what I've read from her before, but it still has the great characterization I loved previously. I described this to a friend as reading like an episode of Law and Order: SVU. We get multiple, multiple POVs (all in third person) and they all revolve around everyone's relation to a crime victim.
The crime in question is the murder of a stripper named Lady Jade, and the disappearance of Ruby, another stripper. They left the club together one night, had their car spun out, and it was found later, starting an investigation into the crime.
Basically we just get a deep dive into these women, the people who knew them, the people who loved them, the people investigating what happened to them, and even the person who attacked them.
There's not too much to say about this one outside of the characterization being good and the format being interesting - it's diverse enough, with characters of quite a few races and sexualities. It's set in the 90s, so that made it interesting - no social media or smartphones that make solving crimes marginally easier these days.
I'm not the hugest fan of where this story ended up going... but that's realism for ya. It was a really good book, regardless of the story, and I'd definitely read more adult novels from Rutkoski.