NOT THAT EASY - Radhita Sanghani

#2 in the Virgin series

TMI! - 3 stars

Plot - 3 stars - Ellie's back after graduating from college and starting an internship at an online magazine. Now that she's no longer a virgin, she's determined to accumulate more sexual experience, she she sets out to find some one-night stands (or ONS's) in search of the perfect orgasm. She's filled with self-doubt and spends most of her time dissecting every single aspect of each date, reevaluating, worrying, and generally being annoying to everyone around her (including this reader).

Writing - 3 stars - To be fair, I was caught up in the story despite my dislike of Ellie. Her experiences were over-the-top, but at times they were quite amusing (although often unlikely).

Characters - 2 stars - I remember now why I didn't care for Ellie in the first book of this series. She's too incredibly needy to be attractive. She becomes totally obsessed with herself, to the detriment of everything and everyone around her. In the first book she was concerned that she was still a virgin and went out of her way to "solve" that problem. In this book she now feels she's not sexually experienced enough, so she decides she needs to have a few one-night stands. But after each one (actually during some of them) she needs to contact "her girls" and tell them every excruciating detail about her encounters. Why would they want to know? And why don't they become completely exasperated with her? I know I was. Instead of enjoying her dates, she completely overanalyzes everything down to the smallest detail, completely overwhelming herself with anxiety. I understand having self-doubt when you're hooking up with someone new, but she totally sabotages herself, creating scenarios that haven't even happened yet and stressing out about them. I suppose it was meant to be funny and entertaining, but instead I found her whiny and her problems to be almost always self-inflicted. On top of all that, she went ahead and wrote about her dates (without their permission) in an online magazine, when it was obvious who she was talking about. That seemed like a blatant exploitation of the relationships she was supposedly trying to build.

Title - 3 stars - This makes sense since Ellie can't get out of her own way, causing most of her own problems, making her dating life much less easy than it ought to have been. Plus, there's a solid explanation within the last few pages of the book that makes the title really make sense.

Cover - 4 stars - This is actually an attractive cover with a black background and bright colorful letters on the front.

Overall - 3 stars - I can't totally dislike this book since there are some entertaining moments and oddly fascinating situations. But Ellie was such an unattractive heroine that I had a hard time wading through her complaints and feeling any sort of compassion for her self-doubts. That being said, I found myself liking her much better towards the end. Not only did she find some self-enlightenment, but she showed gumption and caring and actually came to some conclusions. The fact that they were obvious to everyone else was secondary to the fact that I was happy that she could finally make some sense of her life. By the end I was actually rooting for her success and happiness.