I had a really hard time with the beginning of this book, but I'm so glad i pushed through! I ended up having to write out the characters names, as the dancers were both referred to by their dancer name and their real name. I had the same problem with the detectives who were both called by their first name or their last name. Once i figured out the characters, i really enjoyed the book.
I also have to give props to the narrator. I don't know if i've ever read a book with so many points of view, yet she somehow did a fantastic job speaking for each one of them!!
As someone who has zero experience at a strip club, i greatly enjoyed the Author interview at the end of the audiobook, as well. Don't miss it!

Real Easy was not exactly an easy read. The story contains dozens of different POVs, each hoping to provide a unique perspective on the mystery the story revolves around. A lot of these chapters feel unnecessary and they don’t really contribute anything to the story. An example of this is one chapter devoted to the POV of the random person who finds the dead body. This person is only around for the one chapter, then is never mentioned or part of the story again. Because of how frequently the perspective jumps around, I didn’t really care about any of the characters. Unfortunately this book is a pass for me.

Trigger warning: domestic violence, graphic details, and others

Samantha, a dancer at a local club, does her job and does it well. She makes good money and leaves her work at the job when she goes home. Her boyfriend can be jealous of her job, and her shows it. She befriends a new dancers and takes her home one night. The next morning the new dancer is found dead and Samantha is missing. The race is on to find her alive, but will they?

The book goes into so much more than just the murders, but the lives of the dancers and the daily struggles they face.

I had so much hope for this novel based on the description but in the end it was not for me. The audio version was hard to follow whose view point I was listening to, though this may have been different if I read a hard copy. I wish I had known some of the trigger warnings before going into this audiobook as it would have made a difference.

I would like to thank NetGalley, and Macmillan Audio for the electronic Advanced Reading Copy (eARC) in exchange for my fair and honest review.

I'm really torn with this book. I think the author does a phenomenal job of crafting an intriguing story that puts the life of dancers front and center (based off of the author's own experiences), but I don't think that she really delivered on the murder mystery aspect of this story. I say that because it's pretty clear from the very beginning who the killer is, so it's not really a mystery. Rather, I found myself immersed in the stories that each of the dancer's shared.

A character driven thriller/suspense to get hyped about

The plot centers around the Lovely Lady, a strip club where one dancer goes missing. We get into the heads of dancers, club patrons, detectives, the criminal himself, and the missing woman - the book feels like a character study that just so happens to include a mystery, and that makes it incredible to listen to.

Every character you get a chapter from is so richly developed and the time in their head tells you more and more about the complex little worlds they live in. The police station's internal politics, the dancers' heirarchy, the intense and varied relationships between mother and child, the early 20s question about what to do with your life- all explored and presented with love & care.

I loved the way the author played with time- each chapter could dip to the future, the past, and the present so easily that it could be tricky to figure out the difference in the three, which made the climax as the secrets unraveled feel even more tense.

The audiobook was really good! There was one narrator for the whole book and I liked her voice, and she even had an interview with the author at the end about the author's experiences as a dancer that inspired the plot.

Overall- yeah, you should read it!! I'm obsessed!! The twists, the turns, the red herrings!!

While I love the twisty thriller that is so popular today, I really love stumbling upon that unconventional suspense novel. This is definitely one of those books. Part literary drama, part mystery and a little bit of suspense, it will be different from the other books you have read. Set in the world of exoctic dancing, you get a little look into the industry.

Samantha goes missing while taking home another dancer and there seems no clear cut motive to who might have wanted to kidnap or kill her. As the police search for her, they try to turn another dancer into a confidential informant to get information about the club and its employees.

The only thing that keeps me from raving about this book is it is a little clunky as it tells the events from many perspectives and you don’t get to make a connection to any of them.

Eva Kaminsky as the narrator drew me and kept me intrigued and wanting more.

I enjoyed this one and would pick up her next novel.

✨Real Easy✨
▪️Read February 2022▪️🎧 Audiobook

The Lovely Lady strip club is the focal point if this book. Samantha is a dancer who wants to show up for work, get her money, and get home to her boyfriend and his daughter. Her jealous boyfriend doesn’t love her job, but she feels like the money is so good she can’t step away.

Because Samantha has a kind heart, she takes one of the new clueless dancers home one night but the evening ends with a murder and a missing person investigation. The girls at the Lovely Lady try to go about their normal lives, but some get involved in the investigation and allegations of who committed the crime and where the missing person may be.

I have very minimal prior knowledge about a strip club so this book was pretty eye opening for me, but the author did a great job of “painting the picture”. I was scrambling to listen faster and faster to figure out who did it all, but I was left a bit underwhelmed at the end when it just ended, and I felt like I wanted more details of how it all wrapped up in the end.

*received for free from netgalley for honest review* Would likely reread this! there was a lot going on and i got most of it but this is a book that you could notice something you didn't last time im sure lol

Felt a little slow going. I am not sure if it’s because I listened too it but occasional I had trouble keeping track of who was who. The twist at the end was decent but overall didn’t love it.

The author was a dancer herself 20 years ago and wrote this book about what if one of her worst fears as a dancer at strip club would come true.

The story is in the point of view of the dancers, detectives, children, the victim and the killer.

I loved hearing this story from multiple points of view/characters. I was hooked from the beginning!

Wow. This book was phenomenal. There were so many different storylines rotating around each other all at once. I spent 95% of the story changing my mind! It was heart-wrenching, beautiful, sad, dark, and humorous all in one. This story does have many POVs, but I felt they all added to the main plot.

**received and early release copy from NetGalley and Macmillan Audio.

I really liked the idea of it being set in a strip club, I thought i would be fun. Thats really the only thing i liked about it. The timelines were all over the place. So many characters and they are half baked. No real development. I had a really hard time finishing it. It didnt cover why he did the murders... i dont know. It just didnt do it for me.. Wanted to DNF so many times.

Sorry
Thanks NetGalley for this ARC.

Marie Rutkoski delivers a multilayered, character driven, serial killer mystery that is both a compulsive read and a truly unique experience. I had taken a break from crime novels because they were feeling repetitive and predictable. Real Easy was pleasantly anything but.

I will say that, on audio, it can be a little challenging to keep track of the strippers (legal/stage names) and all of the other characters. Yet, their POVs are deliberate and add to the developing plot.

I loved the author interview at the end. It was so interesting to hear her inspirations, what drove the novel forward and the context of author decisions.

I can see why this book is quickly gaining traction within the realm of book reviewers and hope that it continues it's momentum so many others can experience it.

Thank you Macmillan Audio and Netgalley for the gifted copy.

Thank you to @macmillan.audio and @henryholtbooks for this one I was able to do a read/listen combo!

When I found out this thriller takes place in the 90s at a strip club I knew I had to read it. I’ve read a lot so I’m always looking for unique reads and this was definitely one of them.

I enjoyed it on audio, but I also had a hard time following it on audio, I had to go back a lot, so maybe not your easiest audio to follow, but if you can give it your full attention it is well worth it. I do wish there were more narrators in the story as the story is constantly changing view points, but the narrator still did do an excellent job.

As for the story @marierutkoski mentioned working at a strip club in her early 20s and it really comes through. The characters are very real, and the 90s setting worked perfectly in this one. I definitely hope to read more from this author in the future.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publishers for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Told from several different POVs, "Real Easy" is a murder/kidnapping story set primarily in a strip club, and the lives of the employees and the detectives investigating the crimes.
I enjoyed the way the POVs shifted from character to character easily. They all felt equally important to the story and well written, despite only seeing bits and pieces of their lives.
Definitely a unique and enjoyable read!

Read my full review https://rosepointpublishing.com/2022/01/27/real-easy-a-novel-by-marie-rutkoski-bookreview-crimethrillers/ Rosepoint Publishing.
It’s 1999 and the reader is introduced to Samantha, a veteran exotic dancer at the Lovely Lady strip club. A new dancer is hired who is extremely naïve, inexperienced, and not the brightest. Samantha provides some mentoring and volunteers to drive her home but neither reach home that night.
The reader is gradually introduced to the entertainers, the employees, and the boss, with a few backgrounds. The owner has enforced a few rules, but the patrons are there to drink and satisfy some carnal urges.
Upon the discovery of the body of the newbie, police become involved in the investigation and the other side of society now views the strip club community with a jaundiced, somewhat crude eye. The newbie isn't the first casualty and won't be the last.
It’s a character-driven narrative as seen through the eyes of the club members. The women are drawn with individual goals, stories. It’s dark and atmospheric.
While I suspected the perp, was disappointed in the reveal and the slight let-down of the conclusion. Otherwise, I found the audiobook to be engaging and entertaining. It is well paced with little filler and moves the storyline well, producing more than one or two heart-pumping moments. An unusual premise, plot, and unique characters. 4.5 stars
I received a complimentary review copy of this audiobook from the author and publisher through @NetGalley that in no way influenced this review. These are my honest thoughts.

The story centers around a strip club in 1999. One stripper is dead, one is missing. Another stripper gets pulled into the investigation to help the detectives.
It is raw, gritty and raunchy. It’s like pulling the curtain back to look into the life if a stripper. It was very entertaining and I definitely recommend!

“She does not want to forget goodness, how we offer ourselves to one another - that danger, that grace.”

REAL EASY is a character-driven and expertly paced thriller set in a midwestern strip club in 1999. It stands out in this genre, both introspective and propulsive, horrifying and hopeful. It’s told from multiple perspectives, some repeating and some one-off, allowing the reader to get to know the full cast of perspectives - even the more disturbing ones - as the story slowly circles towards its resolution. Two of the main perspectives are cops, lending this book the feeling of a police procedural as well. The other significant perspectives are several dancers at the club, following their stories before and after one of the women is found dead.

The atmosphere in this story is pitched perfectly: grim, suspenseful, and also mundane. We learn about horrific kidnappings and murders interspersed with characters’ backstories, laden with past wounds and abandoned hopes. The writing is strong, beautiful jewels of sentences glittering throughout the book, buttressed by a weaving structure that keeps you turning the page (despite the slightly slower pace) and hurtling you faster toward the conclusion in the last, clipped chapters. I really enjoyed getting to know each of the main characters, and even characters we only spend a few short pages with are fully fleshed out and compelling. There’s a diverse cast, with queer rep too: one of the main characters is intersex, there’s a lovely sapphic slow-burn romance, and there’s even a brief sighting of two repressed homosexual rock climbers.

A thriller about the deaths of women who dance and strip for a living could do all kinds of wrong. This story centers those voices and contextualizes them, showing the agency these women have and the society they’re in that leaves them often with few other realistic choices. I wasn’t surprised when I learned the author herself had worked as a stripper in her 20s; the women in the story feel authentic, uniquely motivated, and well-rounded, and I really loved the complex representation of motherhood as several of the women navigate work and parenting. Rutkoski also pulls back the layers of the men involved - patrons, boyfriends, bouncers, club owners, cops - to show the toxic masculinity and abuses of power lurking beneath. It’s no abolitionist manifesto; while critical of some aspects of the police force, it leans into typical police procedural tropes of valorizing the cops’ attempts to take advantage of suspects during questioning and, with its detective heroine, sends an overarching “not all cops are bad” message. Plot-wise it does subvert the typical detective genre and I loved that aspect.

It’s a powerful book; I imagine I’ll be thinking about Samantha, Rosie, Georgia, and Holly for a long while. Thanks to Henry Holt & Company for the eARC and to Macmillan Audio for the ALC (the audiobook is fantastic, by the way)!

Content warnings: kidnapping, murder, intimate partner violence, body mutilation, sexual assault/rape, sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia

Real Easy taps on the subject that I’m not very familiar with. The story is dark and twisted. You’ll either love this book or you won’t, there is no in-between. I highly recommend the audiobook. Thank you Macmillan audio via Netgalley for the arc.

This debut novel was very interesting. It brought you into the lives of “real working women”. While I was reading it, I kelp wondering if women in this business were ever scared of their job. And I also wondered if the police really do pay much attention to deaths of a stripper. The author gives you an insight of the life a stripper and the life of a police officer finding a killers.
I did at times drift off. I feel like the author did branch off a few times and I wish that she did a little more explaining. Overall I did enjoy it.