Anything But Easy by Susie Tate

Rating: 3 out of 5.

I had high hopes for this one because I thought the plot seemed intriguing and the cover is just too fun!!! But… there were parts of this that ticked me off so much that I had to stop and do something else to calm down. I’d say up to about 70%, give or take, it was a five star read for me!! I love quirky Kira, her nicknames are awesome, definitely stealing a couple of those!! But then that last 30% tanked for me and I was super irritated about what was going on.

***** Spoiler ***** Kira and Barclay were super adorbs together at first and I just loved his serious badgerness against her quirky craziness. Don’t get me wrong, I think this chick is nuts. But I totally started to dig it and was just bursting laughing constantly. Then Barclay started to cut Kira down, control her, and verbally and mentally abuse her.

There is unfortunately no other word for his behavior. He, and his old codger of a dad abused Kira and then said, oh sorry, guess we’re wrong about you, forgive us for what we would believe to be totally okay behavior had you turned out to be as flighty as we accused you of being… His dad at least only did it once. Barclay did it almost constantly. The most terrifying abusers are the ones who don’t even consider what they’ve done to be abuse. I don’t forgive him and I’m irritated that Kira does. After he’s already had to ask her to forgive him for doing the exact same thing.

I’m going to ignore the end even happened and imagine her perfectly lovely life with someone who really won’t judge her and when she tell him she’ll try to behave for the camera, he says, baby, you be you because that’s who I’m in love with. Not think, yeah right.  ***** Spoilers Over *****

I know I should just get over it because everything seems fine in the end but,… that’s how situations like this usually look like from the outside. Just saying.

I’m probably in the minority, but I don’t recommend this one. I love the writing and this definitely had some great humor, but I can’t get past the chauvinistic behavior. I would, however, be interested in see what else Tate has written.

Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read this for my honest and unbiased opinion.

#NetGalley