I have never given a book an F before. Admittedly, I haven’t been reviewing too long, but I’ve never read a book for review in which I couldn’t find at least something to like, some small flicker of light amidst the gloom of awkward writing and poorly depicted characters. But alas, the minute I finished Easy, I knew the sweet, innocent days of my reviewing youth were over. There is not one single redeeming thing I can point to in this book. Even an F seems like too much praise to heap upon this awful mess of a novel. Based on the cover, I expected this to be a typical light, amusing Chick Lit book. It’s not. It’s not a romance, either. Frankly, I don’t know what the hell it is. All I know is I don’t like it.

Our unnamed protagonist (I won’t call her a heroine) is searching for a relationship. She is supposedly a lawyer, but we’d hardly know this unless we were reading very carefully — it’s mentioned in passing, and work seems never to come up at all unless she’s calling in sick because of a hangover or discussing her love life with women at the office. She is very active on London’s party scene, doing pot and cocaine on a regular basis, and pretty much everywhere she goes she picks up a guy and takes him home. Unfortunately, few of the men are good enough, equipment-wise, and the ones she likes inexplicably don’t stick around. Frankly, they’re smart to get out while they can, because this woman has serious mental health issues, all of which are treated in an unpleasantly flippant fashion that annoys all the more because the author is a therapist.

In the first chapter, our protagonist has sex with a guy who has problems with premature ejaculation. Write him off, and never mind that he seems to be a decent human being – she’s not interested. She then has sex with Rob (he wears sandals, so he’s no good), Nick (she doesn’t like the way his scrotum looks), Rick (undersized, uh… well, let’s just leave it at that), and Mark (he’s been on Prozac for two years, so she figures he’s even more screwed up than she is). Eventually our protagonist makes a comment about one of her lovers that pretty much summarizes the whole book: “Although I don’t fancy him, we end up having sex anyway.”

By this point in the book (barely past the hundred-page mark) I’m wondering if there’s a man in London she’s not going to take to bed by the end of the novel. More to the point, I’m wondering why I should care. Apparently the author felt pretty much the same way, because around this point in the novel the protagonist seems to get bored with her dull ramblings about men, so for a few chapters she begins to talk about her various experiences with therapy (which evidently failed to do her a bit of good, and which we never hear anything further about). She also rambles at length about the morning after pill, cystitis, yeast infections, and various venereal diseases (most of which our protagonist is personally familiar). It’s irrelevant, it’s incoherent, and, worst of all, it’s boring.

There isn’t a single character in this book who’s memorable or distinctive, with the sole exception of the protagonist – and I disliked her so intensely this was definitely not a good thing. She’s apparently never seen a public service announcement: She drives while bombed out of her skull, she has unprotected sex repeatedly, and she mixes legal and illegal drugs in a haphazard fashion that is all too likely to result in trips to the emergency room. She smokes pot at work (“spending my work days in a stoned haze”) and then blames the loss of her job on anti-Semitism. She has a number of close but utterly interchangeable friends, all of whom apparently exist solely to discuss men and dating with her. All her lovers are completely unexceptional. Indeed, they’re often referred to by the size and shape of their equipment. Mark, the guy she dates the longest, has almost nothing to recommend him except the large size of his equipment – at least, that’s pretty much all our protagonist discusses. If the protagonist doesn’t perceive these men as human beings, why should the reader?

All of the protagonist’s exploits are described in raw, raunchy language and extremely crude terms (sometimes with a British twist, as in labeling one of her myriad ex-lovers DB – Donkey Bollocks). The book’s “Hot” rating, in fact, is more reflective of the language and situations than actual sex scenes, which are non-descript and dull. I don’t mind raunchy language if it serves a point. It doesn’t seem to in this book. Indeed, very little in this book seems to serve a point.

Take an utterly shallow, heartless protagonist having various kinds of sex with numerous men who are virtually strangers to her, usually when she’s drunk and/or stoned, and who then wonders why they don’t take her seriously enough to form a relationship with her. Put her into a book that is totally lacking any coherent plot, and utterly devoid of any character development, and in which the humor is too bitter and caustic for the reader to really enjoy. Then ask yourself: Is this a book you really want to read?

For me, the answer was a resounding no.