“I’m fifty shades of fucked up”
~ Christian Grey
Synopsis: Anastasia "Ana" Steele is a 21-year-old
college senior attending Washington State University in Vancouver, Washington
with her best friend Kate Kavanagh, who writes for their student newspaper. Due
to an illness, Kate persuades Ana to take her place and interview 27-year-old
Christian Grey, an incredibly successful and wealthy young entrepreneur. Ana is
instantly attracted to Christian, but also finds him intimidating. Ana
and Christian enter a sexual relationship while slowly building up to a bondage/discipline,
dominance/submission relationship.
In all seriousness Fifty Shades of
Grey brings nothing new to the table.
You’re not missing anything.
What about the sex scenes? Nope, nothing new –
and yes, I have read erotica and no there is nothing new/amazing/unique about
what E. L. James has written.
What about the S&M scenes? There
were only four S&M like parts. Two were in Anastasia’s dreams and
another was when Christian spanks her. The last is at the end when Ana
wants to have the full experience of what an S&M relationship would be like
and gets beaten with a belt.
If you like this book that’s fine, you are
entitled to like what you want. I just didn't care for
it. I’ll go into why I don’t like this book later (the only pro I can
give for this book is that if you like Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series you’ll
like E. L. James books…which is basically Twilight and porn combined.
For now I will give you a short list of things you could do rather than read
this book.
You
could watch…
Every Dr. Who episode. All of Firefly.
Sex and the City series.
Game
of Thrones.
The
Walking Dead.
Or
the news.
|
You
could read…
Any
fan fiction.
Any
other Erotic novel.
A
magazine.
A
romance novel.
Anything
by Amy Tan, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, or Marquis de Sade (the father
of S&M).
|
You
could also…
Go on
Tumblr .
Clean
your house/car/office.
Find
a cure for any cancer of your choice and save lives.
Paint
your nails.
Build
a bird house.
.
|
My Verdict:
I've read the Twilight series and have
read the first book in the Fifty Shades trilogy. I understand
that Fifty Shades of Grey was originally a fan fiction
of Twilight, however, just because you change the names, the ages, and the
city (from Forks to Seattle and Vancouver – still in
Washington) doesn't make it entirely different. Actions speak
louder than words and Fifty Shades of Grey is a prime example of this
old saying. Bella bites her lips, so does Ana. Edward and Christian
stalk the female character whilst also showering her with expensive books, a
car and a phone. There were some differences that I liked, i.e.
Ana doesn't shy away from Christian’s stalking and bossiness.
E. L. James even makes a few cracks about Mr. Grey being gay. But a few
laughs doesn't hide that this is Twilight for
adults. There’s also the bad writing (the over use
of adjectives and adverbs), abuse of the thesaurus, poor/lack of character
development, and the humorous descriptions (i.e. “my inner goddess” – E. L.
James never explains this so I’m left to believe that it is Ana’s inner
femininity).
The only thing I enjoyed was the ending.
When Ana realizes that she and Christian are incompatible and she leaves.
Oh, yeah, spoiler.
But what bothers me, what really makes me
dislike this book has nothing to do with what I’ve put above. When a
writer works hard on their novel, with little to no influence from other
writers, and can’t get published but something like Fifty Shades of
Grey can. A fan fiction story where the writer changes the original
character’s names, ages, and where they live, then passed it off as their
own or at least in some way and in some form.
That’s what really upsets me; why is it she
can get published but people who are truly gifted, who write a novel without
the aid of another writer or story, can’t?
