Book Review: Fifty Shades of Grey by EL James

Fifty Shades of Grey

By EL James

Release Date: January 1, 2011

Source: Borrowed from friend

Summary: When literature student Anastasia Steele is drafted to interview the successful young entrepreneur Christian Grey for her campus magazine, she finds him attractive, enigmatic and intimidating. Convinced their meeting went badly, she tries to put Grey out of her mind - until he happens to turn up at the out-of-town hardware store where she works part-time. 

The unworldly, innocent Ana is shocked to realize she wants this man, and when he warns her to keep her distance it only makes her more desperate to get close to him. Unable to resist Ana’s quiet beauty, wit, and independent spirit, Grey admits he wants her - 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 adoptive family – Grey is a man tormented by demons and consumed by the need to control. When the couple embarks on a passionate, physical and daring affair, Ana learns more about her own dark desires, as well as the Christian Grey hidden away from public scrutiny.

Can their relationship transcend physical passion? Will Ana find it in herself to submit to the self-indulgent Master? And if she does, will she still love what she finds?

Erotic, amusing, and deeply moving, the Fifty Shades Trilogy is a tale that will obsess you, possess you, and stay with you forever.

Review: I was so excited to read this. Like super excited. No, not because of the certain genre it is, but because there are people out there are people out there who absolutely LOVE this book, so I thought I was about to find those rare amazing books that you can fly through, only to be left wanting to read it over and over again (one review I read said she's already read it four times...). After reading it, though, I was like THAT"S what everyone is excited about? There were just too many things that made this book bad than it did good. Don't get me wrong, it was still an interesting story that had it's good moments, but I don't really know how this became such a best seller. 

The first this that bugged me was the writing. Now I know that this was the author's first novel, but the writing really showed that. It seemed kind of juvenile and she repeated a lot of the same lines and expressions and when she did that, they were the cliched lines to describe moments that I'm kind of tired of hearing. So it's really surprising a book that was written in such a way could sell so many copies. Maybe other readers just didn't notice it, but I have read so many books from so many different levels of writing, that it was the first thing that really stuck out to me. 

Now onto the second part...Ana. I liked Ana's character well enough, how she was an inexperienced, kind of shy, and clumsy English student who didn't really know how her life was heading. But how she acted in this book ended up getting kind of annoying. Yeah, I know that if some billionaire hottie started paying attention to me, I would fall at his feet. But once I figured out his secret sex-obsessed side, i would definitely NOT stick around. Especially when he whips out a contract stating very disturbing things I would in no way let anyone do to me. Ana's supposed to be this super smart girl with a large vocabulary and high GPA, yet she's as dumb as rocks when it comes to guys. 

And Christina...Oh, Christian how tormented you are. He has a very strange addiction, yet they make it out that he really can't help how he is. Which, yeah I understand when certain things happen in your life, they change you. But his character does not seem that realistic at all. He's a complete hunk, he's a billionaire who flies helicopters, knows how to play the piano like a pro, and he's completely obsessed over this insecure, clumsy girl who complains about how boring she is compared to her best friend. Sure. And the fact that this relationship was inspired by Bella and Edward in Twilight bugs the crap out of me. (If Kristen Stewart plays Ana in the movie, I'm going to stab my own eyes out). It's really interesting to see how Christian falls for Ana and lets her in more, but the way it happens just isn't that believable to me. 

And the storyline! Nothing happens or goes anywhere! I've heard that this book just sets up for the next book, but why does it take 500 PAGES to set up for the next book? Things just seemed to drag by of Ana going back and forth between loving Christian and being scared of his violent side. If more things happened in the storyline, I feel like I would have liked it more, but things go nowhere! Ana learns more about Christian and grows to love him, but that's basically it. 

I know all I've done is point out the bad points of this book and you're probably wondering why this still got a three, but there's just something about it that has me wanting to read the next books. I definitely haven't read a book with a story like this one and I liked the idea the author came up with, the execution just didn't turn out for me. And it's a lot easier to point out what was wrong with this book than to explain why I still have a part of me that liked this one. I know for sure I'm going to finish this series, I just hope that they end up being a lot more eventful and better written than this one was!