Infinity. \ in·fin·i·ty \in-?fi-n?-t?\ Part of speech: Noun. Definition: The amount of reading responses necessary to express the significance and beauty of this novel. Sentence: It would take an infinity of reading responses to express the significance and beauty of this novel.

Ruta Sepetys, whose name I have no idea how to pronounce, did not disappoint with her second book. I was worried that Out of the Easy would not live up to her bestselling and deeply moving Between Shades of Gray, but it turned out I had nothing to fear. My tour of 1950s New Orleans through the eyes of Josie Moraine proved to be just as captivating as that of 1940s Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Siberia with Lina Vilkas.

The characters were what really got me. I loved to love the good guys and loved to hate the bad guys…so really, I loved everybody. I loved Josie Moraine, of course, the seventeen-year-old desperate to escape the stereotype of the daughter of a prostitute. I loved Patrick Marlowe, her assistant in the bookstore, and how they’d devised a whole system of hand gestures to predict what type of book each customer would want. I loved Charlie, Patrick’s disabled and traumatized father. I loved Jessie Thierry, Josie’s other male friend, who’d been shot in the foot and never failed to produce an extra nickel for soda if needed. I loved Louise, Josie’s dreadful mother, and how totally she managed to ignore her daughter (it was impressive, okay?). I loved John Lockwood, that disgusting, pathetic, greedy guy. I loved Cincinatti, the richest and most immoral man in the whole book. I loved Sadie, the mute housekeeper, and the way she could say everything she needed to with just facial expressions. I loved Cokie, the humble and loyal taxi driver, who was willing to give up everything for those he cared about. I especially loved Charlotte, Josie’s fellow bookworm and friend who accepted her rough past, and I wished I could know her in real life. I loved the moneymaking girls: grouchy Evangeline, sweet Sweety, and Dora who wore nothing but green. I loved them all.

One. \one \?w?n\ Part of speech: Adjective. Definition: Describing the amount of reading responses necessary to make me realize how insignificant and illogical this novel was. Sentence: It took one reading response to make me realize how insignificant and illogical this novel was.

Ruta Sepetys, whose name I googled and now know rhymes with ‘spaghettis’, definitely disappointed with her second book. I was worried that Out of the Easy would not live up to her bestselling and deeply moving Between Shades of Gray, and it turned out I was right. My tour of 1950s New Orleans through the eyes of Josie Moraine proved to be, upon second inspection, absolutely nothing compared to that of 1940s Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Siberia with Lina Vilkas.

The characters were what really got me. The plot revealed itself to be dreadfully predictable and adherent to the poor-kid-look-how-horrible-her-life-is-wait-she-found-true-happiness-let’s-all-cry-and-laugh-now story line. That certainly came as a disappointment; Sepetys had obviously invested a huge amount of research into it, and it had such potential. But it turned out that the creative side, not the factual, was what was chiefly lacking. I felt most cheated regarding the people who had worked their way into my heart over the course of the 300-some pages. I suppose I should have realized something wasn’t quite right when fourteen (yep, count ‘em) consecutive sentences beginning with “I loved” were the best I could I initially come up with for an analysis. It wasn’t that they were two-dimensional or boring. If anything, the opposite was the problem: they were too eccentric, too improbable, too good or too bad to be true. When Josie told Willie that her mom stole her birthday watch and all of her college savings, the lady keeled over from anger and promptly died. What? No thank you. It was the same story with Charlotte walking into the bookstore, introducing herself to Josie, and then carrying on as if she had known her forever. I loved Willie (don’t worry, I won’t start again) and I loved Charlotte, but realism cannot be thrown out the window in any novel.

That lack of authenticity, however, wasn’t what bothered me most.  Sepetys’ extensive research and intrinsic writing skills came to the rescue and enabled her to smooth over all but the most blatant exaggerations, but nothing could disguise the opportunities she missed. That investigation and that style did an additional duty: they put her in an excellent position to implement some great plot devices and twists. I was constantly on my toes while reading because I couldn’t stop thinking up ways various leads could—and, surely, would—be taken. Ha! I thought to myself countless times. I’ve got this all figured out. That ____ from chapter ___ will come back and ___! Nice try, Sepetys. Sadly, I would never fail to be disappointed when matters played out in the drabbest, most ordinary and predictable way possible. My bitterest frustration was caused by none other than Charlie, the sweet and scared old man who never harmed a soul. He was pretty much comatose the entire book, but then Sepetys brilliantly introduced a typewriter and had him type the letter B. What a genius move! I drove myself crazy trying to guess what he would eventually spell and what significance it would have. But only two more letters were punched, L and V, and then Charlie died. ‘BLV’ was forgotten until Patrick was going through boxes of his belongings and made some offhand comment about it being a reference to the first chapter of the book Charlie wrote—a chapter called “Be Love.” I could not believe how cheesy and stupid that was. It was never addressed again, either, and it played absolutely no role in anything whatsoever. After two reading responses, that seems to be my general conclusion: Out of the Easy would have been a decent book if it had had a purpose.