Easy

Contours of the Heart, Book 1

By: Tammara Webber

Narrated by: Tara Sands

Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

A girl who believes trust can be misplaced, promises are made to be broken, and loyalty is an illusion.

A boy who believes truth is relative, lies can mask unbearable pain, and guilt is eternal.

Will what they find in each other validate their conclusions, or disprove them all?

©2012 Tammara Webber (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Perseverance conquers all.

What made the experience of listening to Easy the most enjoyable?

I love that the author showed the characters can overcome heartaches and hard ship especially in this young adult novel. I love Lucas.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Great choice with the narrator. Her voice is perfect for this YA book.

Any additional comments?

This book dealt with rape topic and I thought the author did a great job working it through the story line. I am glad she showed the thought process of how the character worked through her decisions.

Refreshing and unexpected

This story didn’t have witches and warlocks, or vampires and werewolfs. It didn’t have lords and ladies, or a perfect billionaire obsessed with a stupid annoying woman. It had humor, romance, and drama, all in a nice mix with regular people. The story was very intense at times – disturbing because it was realistic, but very good. The female character had a brain, and wasn’t a compulsive liar or a complete fool like almost every female character in modern romance books. I knew I liked her when she blurted out the truth about missing class to her professor. I am a mature female, but I listen to all types of books. I tried City of Bones because of the buzz about the movie, but it didn’t work for me. This story was an unexpected pleasure and I liked the characters a lot. I have downloaded the other books by this writer.

LOVED IT!!!

Any additional comments?

This was my first book from this author and I loved it. I couldn't stop listening to this, went through it in 2 days. There was just something about it that just draws you in, I just loved the story and the characters

Good Book Good Narrator

I stayed up late and listened to this book all in one day. You feel invested in the characters from the beginning and feel like you are going along the journey with them. It deals with some difficult topics in a believable way without being over-the-top. The narrator was good. She was able to give each character personality and her male voices were fairly good.

Easily one of the best books I've ever listened to

Easily one of the best novels I have ever read – er, listened to – Easy by Tammara Webber is emotional, uplifting, and empowering. I think every woman should read it.
Jacqueline Wallace followed her high school boyfriend to college, despite being an incredibly talented musician, where a music conservatory would have been better suited to her collegiate and musical needs and advancement. She was in love and shunned the criticism of her high school music teachers and her parents. Three years together with her boyfriend Kennedy and she thought she had most of her life figured out; she never thought he would dump her to “bang co-eds with shameless abandon.”
But he did. And the result of that leads her to a Greek party with her roommate, where one of Kennedy’s frat brothers sees an opening to Jacqueline, now that Kennedy is out of the way, for his own twisted agenda.
If you have read other reviews, you know that Easy opens with what appears to be a rape scene. It’s uncomfortable, it’s controversial, but…it’s very real. Some books use rape, or any controversial topic, really, to make the book. And honestly, Easy is no different, but it’s incredibly well-done and delivered with a very specific message that when someone violates your body, you can recover from it if you are empowered to do so. It also shows that rape is not just about the two involved in the encounter: it’s like throwing a pebble into a pond, and watching the ripples spread out, because rape has adverse affects on those around the victim, not just the victim herself. Enter Lucas, bad boy-extraordinaire.
Lucas is the Bad Boy Ever Girl Dreams About, with his broad shoulders, gray eyes and shaggy, dark hair. He is not just a way for Jacqueline to get over Kennedy; he is a savior, he is her outlet for desire, he is her safe zone. He might be everything she ever wanted that she didn’t even know she craved. He is full of his own secrets, and no, he isn’t above reproach, but he walks through life knowing he isn’t perfect, and yet, I think he strives to achieve perfection.
Holy sh*tballs, I lusted after him.
Jacqueline’s roommate, Erin, is the friend every girl needs. She is brazen and confident, and always has her sh*t-kicking shoes on, no matter if they are platform heels or not. She’s also incredibly supportive when she finds out about Jacqueline’s attack and urges Jacqueline to become self-reliant and able to defend herself. She’s funny and, while the polar opposite to Jacqueline’s studious, quiet nature, not as brainless as she passes herself off to be in the beginning.
There are a myriad of other characters that really flesh out the story: Buck the Rapist, Kennedy the Ex-Boyfriend, Professor Heller, Mindy the Other Victim, the Greeks, and Landon the Tutor. They were all really great (well, except Buck, what a dickhead!) and they rounded out the story perfectly.
But let me tell you how Easy made me feel:
The first night after listening to the book, I dreamed I was raped. It was that well done and I was that emotionally disturbed by the story that I dreamed about it. I couldn’t get it out of my mind and every chance I had, I was listening to this book. It felt compulsory, like I needed to be there with Jacqueline to go through this time with her. My heart raced through the “pages” with Jacqueline and Lucas, and I railed against the obstacles that faced each of them and kept them being together where they so obviously belonged. I wanted them together, dammit!
Rape is a very central theme to this story; even if it makes you uncomfortable, I still urge you to read it, because it elaborates how it knits people so closely together, and how a community of friends can build from it. It’s super-rare that a book makes me feel so emotionally attached to its characters and Easy deserves every star it has earned from me.

Narration Review:
Tara Sands does a great job narrating the audio version of Easy by Tammara Webber. She has a wide range of voices, although she did sometimes mix them up between the characters, which would occasionally throw me off. It didn’t happen often, just enough for me to notice when I got into the story and was able to distinguish who was whom. Her pace and accents were fabulous and I will definitely look for more audios narrated by her.

Sooooo WELL DONE!

Any additional comments?

First of all, I want everyone who’s reading this review to be fully aware that a lot of content in this book is all about THE very things that I normally say absolutely NO to when reading a book. So, me giving this book 4 stars is pretty ginormous. Number one, I do not read Contemporary. Number two, I do not read anything that has Adult or New Adult content. And, lastly, I stay 100 feet away from anything that has to do with sexual assault. All of the peeps out there who have been trying to push me into reading this book really don’t know me too well. But even after saying all that, I actually quite enjoyed this book.

I listened to Easy on Audible on a road trip, and I only started listening to it because I was struggling to keep awake while listening to another book. I’m not going to tell you what other book I had to put on hold in order to listen to Easy, but I think everyone would die if they knew what book I set aside to listen to this one.

Anyways, the scene in the very beginning pretty much should have told me to run far, far away. But it didn’t frighten me as much as it normally would, and I was consumed into the writing style so that I kept on listening.

Easy was written with extremely well developed characters. Jacqueline is struggling with a previous breakup, then this horrible thing happens to her and then she grows into a very strong character throughout the story. Everything about Lucas is easy to fall in love with from his hot looks, to his funny, playful and protective personality. And then there are the several douchebag characters that were very well developed too.

Obviously, you can see that this book is full of all kinds of drama, so it’s a given that there would be a lot of tears shed while listening to this book. And yes, I sobbed! The best part of the story was the romance with Jacqueline and Lucas! The whole development of their relationship was extremely well done.

Very sweet!

What did you love best about Easy?

I loved the storyline. The hot, bad boy hero who is sexy yet sweet and caring. This is a wonderful love story. It is a bit deeper than the usual romance novels which is something I loved about this book. This book pulls at your heartstrings and will make you want to find a man like Lucas and never let him go.

this book should be a movie

if anyone read this you should read this book. over and over again. why isn't this book a movie yet.

Great story...distracting narrator

This was a great book. I finished it quickly and was on the edge of my seat with the twists and turns. I did not like the narrator. I think she would be great to be on the evening news giving the hard hitting stories but was not great to portray a 20 year old college girl. Although, she was not great for this book, I would still recommend this audio version.

Really good, and at a bargain price!

Lovers of new adult romances will definitely want to check this out! (Yes, this is a new adult book, by the way. It’s about college students, should you want to know. The plot description above is kind of nonexistent.)

Be warned that this opens with a realistic portrayal of an attempted rape on a college campus. It’s not gory, but it’s uncomfortable to hear. It’s also central to the plot; our heroine needs to deal with all the jumbled emotions and whispered rumors that come from the attack, and from the fact that the attacker is still at large. I thought this was all very well done by the author. She’s got a sensitive eye for the subtleties in her character’s lives. Life is messy, and traumatic events are an added curve ball. The main character is a survivor though, well worth cheering through to the end.

But that’s not what makes this book so good. I loved the characters! And the ones I didn’t love were a lot like some people I remember from my own college experiences.

And the romance? Well worth the price of admission! Lucas has some demons of his own to work past, and is way up on my “good characters” list. Jacqueline and Lucas’s love story is sweet, sensitive, and just down right yummy. ;) I found myself making time to listen to this one.

Good writing, yummy romance, cheer-worthy heroine... New adult romance trifecta! Nice narration too. If this is your genre, highly recommended!