Book Review: 50 Shades of Grey by E.L James

AUTHOR: E.L James
PUBLISHER:
PAGES: 356
STAND ALONE/SERIES: Series (50 Shades)
SOURCE: Bought
OUTLINE:
When literature student Anastasia Steele goes to interview young entrepreneur Christian Grey, she encounters a man who is beautiful, brilliant, and intimidating. The unworldly, innocent Ana is startled to realize she wants this man and, despite his enigmatic reserve, finds she is desperate to get close to him. Unable to resist Ana’s quiet beauty, wit, and independent spirit, Grey admits he wants her, too—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 family—Grey is a man tormented by demons and consumed by the need to control. When the couple embarks on a daring, passionately physical affair, Ana discovers Christian Grey’s secrets and explores her own dark desires.

MY THOUGHTS

My curiosity got the better of me, plus some other contributing factors went into me reading it. Curiosity being the first then with the movie coming out I wanted to be able to compare the two. I know you shouldn't do that, but this book just seemed like I would have to read it to be able to say whether or not I actually would like the movie. That remains to be seen. Also when I worked at B & N I always passed the little table we had set up for it.

With that being said here is what I thought. Did it suck? Not like I thought it would. I was waiting for this epic train wreck to happen (even though train wrecks aren't at all epic and a bit frightening kind of like Christian at times.) Did I love it?  No, there was a lot about it that I found to be ridiculous. I'll get to that in a moment, but I'm not going to say it was trash and rag on it. I will tell you the problems I had with it. While it'll probably sound like I'm contradicting myself (and I know I will) this is why I would give it 3 stars if I did the star rating on here.

-Read at your own risk-

The Story

Fifty shades of Grey itself WAS pretty much soft porn written down. The story itself was one we've all pretty much read in some form or another (but those having less sex and no BDSM.) So to say I enjoyed the story wouldn't be accurate. I was more curious as to how it would be made into these other two books that follow it. How Ana would turn out through all of it and if Christian ever learned to truly love. I'm still a little unsure of how it was done, but I guess once I read the other two I'll know. I know you're thinking why on gods green earth would you continue these books if you didn't like this one. It's pure curiosity, and the fact that I have this problem where I have to continue series regardless if I liked the previous book. 

The Characters

The characters are all kinds of craziness. There are things about each of them that had me wanting to pull my hair out. Then there were things about them that I found almost normal.

Ana's stupidity.
Don't get me wrong I enjoyed her character. I felt like in ways I could relate to her. If you try to get me to open up to you face to face it's more than likely not going to happen, but give me a phone, a laptop, or somewhere I can write it down, and you will have my feelings flat out, every pissed off, sad, happy thought. I'm just not good with face to face confrontation. Which seems like Ana a bit.

"You have no problem being honest with me in print. Your emails always tell me exactly how you feel. Why can't you do that in conversation." pg 268

But the fact that's she's ignores the clear warnings from Mr. Grey as shown below

"Anastasia, you should steer clear of me. I'm not the man for you."pg 49  

"Anastasia, I'm not a hearts and flowers kind of man...I don't do romance. My tastes are very singular. You should steer clear of me." He closes his eyes as if in defeat. "There's something about you though, and I'm finding it impossible to stay away."pg 72

"Anastasia, you should steer clear of me. I'm not the man for you. I don't do the girlfriend thing. I'm not a hearts and flowers kind of guy. I don't make love. This is all I know. pg 230  

shows us how frustrating she can be to the reader. Oh, and her inner goddess I wanted to rip her out. Ana was definitely naive at first when it came to things that Christian did, and I believe he pulled her into things she wasn't ready for, but all Ana seemed to care about was trying to "fix" him

Christian, the CEO of Grey Enterprise, at first glance he seems normal. He's this hot, rich, but we learn later that he has a dark past that has also molded him into this other person. I'll admit I like the Christian that is carefree and gives to the world, the one who opened up to Ana, the one who let his guard down. Like below.

Gingerly, he moves over and puts his arms around me and pulls me to his chest. "Sleep, baby," he whispers. pg 289