Fifty Shades of Grey

Goodreads Synopsis:

When literature student Anastasia Steele goes to interview young entrepreneur Christian Grey, she encounters a man who is beautiful, brilliant, and intimidating. The unworldly, innocent Ana is startled to realize she wants this man and, despite his enigmatic reserve, finds she is desperate to get close to him. Unable to resist Ana’s quiet beauty, wit, and independent spirit, Grey admits he wants her, too—but on his own terms.

 Shocked yet thrilled by Grey’s singular erotic tastes, Ana hesitates. For all the trappings of success—his multinational businesses, his vast wealth, his loving family—Grey is a man tormented by demons and consumed by the need to control. When the couple embarks on a daring, passionately physical affair, Ana discovers Christian Grey’s secrets and explores her own dark desires.


Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have been putting off reading this book for a while. Every time I picked it up in a store to buy it, I talked myself out of it. I finally caved and bought it. It took me much longer to read than it should have because I kept having to put it down. There are two reasons that I needed to put it down from time to time.

1. The writing style is absolutely awful. We are following the story in the mind of a 22 year old but she seems like a 12 year old. She seems to have multiple personalities and can't mentally articulate beyond "oh" and "what". Anastasia is the most obnoxious character. I really can't stand her. She was a submissive for a very small portion of the book and she cried like a baby whenever he did exactly what he told her he was going to do. Every character had extreme mood-swings that were impossible to keep up with. Christian caved on his contract and altered his lifestyle in the blink of an eye. It just didn't match up with the badass character that E.L. James had developed earlier in the book. The writing would get so bad that I had to put it down just to keep from tearing it in half.

2. The sex is amazing. Despite all of James' shortcomings as an author, she knows how to write some good sex. You really couldn't help getting caught up in it all. I've read a few romance novels in my day and I'd say that James knows her way around the bedroom. The sex was so good and so constant that I had to put it down because it was making me blush. I kept looking around the breakroom at my job to make sure nobody could tell that I was reading something naughty.

I almost gave the book 2 stars because the writing was so abhorrent. I upped it to three because it got me hot and bothered. That's worth a star any day. ;)

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