Cait Reads: Fifty Shades of Grey

Hello!

I have a book review for you guys today.

One of my friends runs a small book club, and asked if I would write a review for him based on the book that they’re reading this month. As kind of a disclaimer, the book in question is Fifty Shades of Grey, and I honestly had no idea what it was about until after I read it. After I finished, I did some major googling, and certainly my eyes have been opened. As far as things that I did know going in, I knew that it was a New York Times bestseller, and that it has taken the country by storm. I also knew that it was written by a middle-aged, first time author.

I have the ebook of Fifty Shades of Grey, so I can’t comment much on the physical thickness of the book. It is, however, a fairly quick read.  I finished it up this morning, after about three hours. It’s not terribly verbose, and reads like it was written for someone of a lower reading level. 

The real kicker however is that this book started off as a Twilight fan-fiction, and it’s exceedingly obvious that is true. Really, this book is what you get when a middle-aged woman would like to have kinky sex with Edward Cullen. 

So, the Bella in this story is Anastasia Steele. She’s a recent college graduate, living with her roommate, Kate. Kate, for all intents and purposes, is the Alice of this story. Kate gets sick the day that she is supposed to do an interview for their college newspaper, so Ana goes in her place. The interview is with 27 year old telecommunications magnate Christian Grey, who is hot, single, and has an icy cold demeanor. He was also adopted by a wealthy couple, along with the rest of his siblings and has a mysterious past. He then pursues the relatively plain, not wealthy Ana, the whole time telling her that he “isn’t good for her” and that she should “stay away”, while she is wondering what made her so worthy of the sexy billionaire. It’s easy to relate to the main character because she is never described in any way. She could look like anything, for all I know. Sound familiar? Yeah. Twilight. Right there. Oh, and Christian is all broody, and you just know that he has some weird secret.

Well, it turns out that his weirdness is not that he’s a vampire, it’s that he is ridiculously kinky. He has a crazy BDSM dungeon that he calls the Playroom. Oh, and he’s terrified of intimacy, in an I’ll-whip-you-and-have-raunchy-sex-involving-suspension, but you can’t sleep in his bed or touch him kind of way. *sigh*

The book ends on a big old cliffhanger, and doesn’t really have much of a plot. It’s just these two people, pursuing each other, trying to come to terms with the fact that the billionaire is batshit insane. In my opinion, this book shouldn’t have been published, much less be on the NYT bestseller list. It’s the kind of thing that should be banished to the dark corners of the internet. It isn’t even the weird sex scenes, it’s that her writing is truly terrible. It’s definitely worse than any of the Twilights, in terms of technical skill, just to put it in perspective. There's a distinct lack of plot, and the characters are very predictable, shallow, and dimensionless. It is a very quick read, but that's because there wasn't really much there to think about.

Read it, or don’t. It’s not terrible, but I don’t think it’s worth the hype, just in terms of skill or plot.