Book Review: Fifty Shades of Grey, E.L. James

Reading Level:    Published Fan fiction (erotica)

Hardcover:         391 Pages 

Publisher:          Self-Pubbed, Random House

Parasols:            2

First off I'm going to explain why I gave it two parasols. I think the names of the characters are pretty cool. With that aside, this book was terribly written, horribly plotted and really made me wonder what the hell people see in reading this.  I know that I should be a bit more gentle because this was based on Twilight fan fiction, but I've read better fan fiction.  I think people are so awed by the sex that they don't look at the whole picture.

The copy I read was from The Coffee House Writers, not quite polished by Random House yet.  But from what I heard, they didn't do much.  There were grammar mistakes, comma splices and basic sentence structure problems.  That's the technical aspects of the story.

Now on to the story.  Ana Steele is just graduating college when she offers to interview a high-powered young corporate owner for her sick room mate.  Of course, Ana is a klutz, so her first meeting of Christian Grey is on the floor after falling flat on her face. (Shades of Bella.) Christian is quite taken with this nubile youngster and decided pretty much right then and there that he must have her.  So he does the stalking thing (Shades of Edward).  He shows up at her job (a hardware store) and purchased things that make Ana wonder why he needs rope and other things that everyone knows will be for bondage.  He asks Ana out and from there on, Ana's life will change.

First date, he wants her to be his submissive.  He will dominate her in every thing and she will accept it.  In fact he has a contract! At this point, I would run away and tell him that he's nuts.  But not Ana, she's intrigued.  Of course she is, her inner goddess, (who sorta is the best part of the books), is hootin' and hollerin'.  Needless to say, she has some issues with contract, but doesn't mind losing her virginity to him.  To Ana it's mind blowing.  To Christian it's vanilla sex.  Hey, I like vanilla!  It's a great creamy flavor!

So on and on we go, with Christian trying to dominate Ana, yet she manages to dominate him and falls in love with him.  It gets better when she gets a job at a small publisher in Seattle and her boss makes a move.  Well I think you know that Christian goes off the rails and buys the pub.  Christian becomes so obsessed with Ana that it borders on insanity.  Finally Ana gives in and allows Christian to do his dom thing and it scares her so much that she decides this is not for her and that is the end of the book.

I had to read the second book because I wanted to know what happened.  It was the back and forth as the first one.  Honestly the sex in this book was okay, nothing crazy or mind blowing.  Women are clamoring for this mommy porn.  Maybe it'll give them ideas in the bedroom. 


Honestly, I say skip it.  The only reason people are buying it is because they want to see what the phenomena is.  Yet, it's really not worth it. I only read the first two and I'm not really sure if I need or want to read the third book.