Normally, I don't follow the crowd. I don't have to see the latest blockbuster in theaters when it comes out at midnight on a school night. I don't wait in line for hours to pick up the latest gadget. I don't read books like Twilight or Lord of the Rings. I don't watch primetime TV (although, I will watch reruns on Netflix if I get hooked - ex. Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice). I'm not sure why this is the case, I guess I just like blaze my own trail. Anyway, when Facebook became inundated with posts about the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy, I was indifferent. That was until I read reasons why people weren't reading it, then I became intrigued. I also read that hardware stores were having trouble keeping rope on the shelf, which I really don't understand because the characters never even used it. I picked up my handy Kindle Fire and went to the book store. Then I found they wanted $9.99 for one book. Um. No. Fortunately, I have a friend who is even more resourceful than I am and she sent me the whole series. I set to work to see what all the hype was about.
First, the good (sort of). It kept me interested at first but it seemed to follow the law of diminishing returns. The more I read, the less interested I became. The author tried to come off as a sesquipedalian (aka user of big words) and I think my vocabulary expanded slightly. It was almost as though she overused her thesaurus and underused it at the same time. Anyway, this is supposed to be the good. The book was about BDSM, which is very obviously why so many understimulated housewives are enjoying it. They have an inner freak similar to Ana's inner goddess. Some of the sex scenes she described were entertaining, but they lost their spunk a few hundred pages into the book. The romance was thick. I can see how people would like to read about handsome billionaires lavishing an ordinary mortal with houses in Aspen, condos in New York, Audis, diamonds, expensive vacations, and Christian Louboutins. I get it.
The bad. There was absolutely no plot. It kind of felt like I was just reading Ana's blog. The author has got to be laughing about this all the way to the bank. James does throw in a few good sub-plots that kept me turning the pages like the time the ex-submissive Leila held a gun to Ana and the time Ana's ex-boss Hyde demanded ransom for Christian's sister. The problem? It only lasted a couple of pages and the solution was entirely predictable. As for a climax (insofar as stories go), there was no major climax in any book. It was just a flat storyline. Not only that, the story wasn't even believable. Their romance blossomed at a freakishly quick pace. She needed her ass whooped, and not by him, for moving so quickly with a man.
More bad. The redunancy was so annoying. Ana and Christian were constantly fighting and having makeup sex. GAG ME (metaphorically speaking). Not only was the story repetitive, but James used the same five sentences to rehash the same story lines OVER AND OVER. The book was on repeat. I never had trouble turning off my Kindle to go to bed at night. To me, that is the measure of a good read...whether you can't put the thing down at night. I could. Her prose was terrible. I've seen autistic monkeys with better communication skills. I was more distracted by that than anything else. She also had a hard time with writing in the first person. We never knew Christian quite like we knew Ana. The ways she told us about him was through emails (FOR REAL). She also made us read the dominant/submissive contract TWO agonizing times to give us a glimpse into his world. At the end, when she realized she had written something totally unbelievable into the story (Ana withdrawing five million bucks for ransom) she just wrote a separate chapter that described a phone conversation Christian had with the banker. Really? Lame. Then at the end she tells the story of Ana and Christian meeting (again), but this time from Christian's POV. After spending hundreds of pages making the reader want to like Christian, she finishes by making him look like a complete douchebag.
Anyway, I'm done bagging on that book. I guess this is why I don't follow trends. I am far too cynical to enjoy them.
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