Fifty Shades of Grey (50 Shades Trilogy, #1)

by E L James

[clementine]

The more I heard about this book, the more I knew that I would end up reading it at some point. It just seemed inevitable to me. So, a few days ago, I bit the bullet and downloaded it. I read all 500+ pages in the space of about 36 hours - it was certainly addictive.

Now, let me get this out of the way: I knew it was going to bad, but I thought I'd give it a chance. Its origins are Twilight fanfiction, but there's good fanfiction out there! So I thought, you know, I won't discount it just because it's Twilight fanfic.

First - it was more plot-based than I was expecting. Now, the plot was nothing special, but it actually did have some structure to it. So... I guess I was mildly pleasantly surprised there? There was, like, character development and stuff. I mean, kind of - it's not like Ana and Christian are particularly deep (and all the "I'm fucked up because of my crack whore mother" stuff was just so cliché and awful), but she tried, I guess? There's a lot of inner turmoil, at least.

So, the writing was really bad, obviously. Abuse of ellipses, overuse of certain phrases (what? this is Twilight fanfic, you say? COULDN'T BE), and all the weird overused euphemisms. It was really easy to read and get through quickly, though - I mean, most people probably aren't reading this type of book for wonderful prose anyway, so although the writing is undeniably shitty I guess it's not actually that much of an issue.

The characters were barely tolerable. I know Christian's whole thing is the control freak persona, and I tried to be open-minded to it, but I just DON'T LIKE IT. I do. not. like. it. And I don't want Ana to like it, because it creeps me out. Ana is also really annoying, because she's so naive and innocent that it's just revolting. I mean, yeah, I get that it's part of her character, but it was just so unbelievable. Also, this wasn't a huge part of the plot, but what middle-class university graduate in 2011 doesn't have access to a computer? NO. I'm sorry. NO. I thought that the subconscious and inner goddess thing was a good idea in theory (showing her conflicting emotions, etc), but it was really irritating in practice and I wanted to punch her because it just seemed weird and mildly delusional. I liked Kate, though. She knows what's up.

One last thing: Ana had such a preoccupation with Christian's "long fingers". She mentioned it like 7 or 8 times! I thought they must have some significance because she just kept bringing it up, but NOPE, it's just a fixation she had.

I don't know, the whole thing just gave me secondhand embarrassment because it's so obvious that it's fanfiction/a middle-aged woman's fantasy, from the structure of the writing to the lavish lifestyles to the unbelievable characters. I just felt EMBARRASSED for EL James when I was reading it! I'm giving it two stars because I have to admit that it kept me entertained (and I'm totally downloading the other two as soon as I finish this review), but man was it bad. I have more extensive notes that I took while I read it and I have to decide what to do with them. They're really just a list of about 50 or so comments corresponding with different sentences/passages that I thought were awful. We'll see.