Fifty Shades Of Grey by E. L. James

I have heard many things about the Shades of Grey Trilogy and very few things were good. I decided to jump on the wagon and take a chance. I figured it was best to form my own opinions on this book rather than listen to all the bad, bad, bad things I've heard.  Everything -- I heard was true.

This book is atrocious yet, I managed to finish reading it! I wasn't bothered by the subject material at all, I am far from prudish but the writing -- the character's -- the cliches are all over the top. I cringed every single time the heroine Ana' made mention of her "inner goddess" -- which seems to happen every 20 pages or so.

Then I did some research, I heard that this all started out as, Twilight fan fiction (which is, just wrong, wrong, wrong!) and you know --- I totally see it. It's as though the author couldnt' quite come up with her own characterization and took the character's and some story lines right out of Twilight. There has to be some type of copyright infringement. I recognized that stories will have similarities and there is really no "new" ideas but her character's are nearly the exact same --- lets do some comparisons here:


Christian (50 shades) and Edward (Twilight)  are  both dark and dangerous, adopted, play the piano, give their heroine a car, filthy rich, tall, handsome, have stalker like qualities, and harbor a deep secret.  Ana (50 shades) and Bella (Twilight) are both clumsy, beautiful, virginal, always in danger of some sort and consider themselves plain when everyone else views them as beautiful. Ana and Bella as both have strong father figures and "flighty" mothers  --- and these are just some of the similarities with the characters... don't get me started on other things.

This book is not well written and phrases are constantly repeated. I also think the author pulled out the thesaurus and threw in obscure words for the sake of trying to make the character's appear more sophisticated and intelligent ,when in fact all it does is annoy the crap out of you.

When it comes down to it this book is rather simple and easy to read. It isn't and won't be great literature and is purely for entertainment value. I would not buy it but I would check it out from the library or borrow it from a friend.

Is it worth reading? Eh --- depends on you. If you want to get to the "good" stuff just skip ahead to around page 70 or so.  Will, I read the rest of the books? Yes, I am a glutton for punishment. I also can't just read one book in a trilogy and not review the rest. I'm hoping it improves and I find a way to like the characters.

Oh --- I nearly forgot to tell you what the book is about. It is basically about this young woman named Ana who meets up with a gorgeous powerful man named Christian. It is about Ana wanting to be loved by Christian and he wanting to control her and show her his world of sex.

Grade: C--




The best and my favorite part of this book --- is the cover.