50 Shades of Grey

I haven't done a book review for a while.  But this one has to be done - if only to warn people.

I just finished 50 Shades of Grey, by E.L. James.  I read it under duress and only so people I know would stop asking me if I'd read them.  Okay, and so I could see what all the fuss was about.  You can't turn around without hearing a reference to these books - at least where I live.


I got a copy for my Kindle and, at 27% done, I was so annoyed I found it necessary to update my status on Goodreads (something I have never done before) with the following:  'I'm forcing myself to read this so I know what all the fuss is about. But it is frankly torture. If I have to read the phrase "oh my" one more time I'm going to scream.'

Sorry all of you fans out there, but this book sucked. Take every cliche you can find and wrap it up into a couple of characters, then throw in some porn/sex scenes written like it's for a man. Seriously.  Don't believe me? Try a virgin who meets a hot guy, has sex with him once, and all of a sudden knows exactly how to deep throat - and swallows! Yeah, if you believe that I've got a hot friend who delivers pizza, scantily clad,  who really wants to get laid by the entire sorority house.  No, really!


I'm not above smutty reading nor am I claiming never to have purveyed my share of porn.  But I was under the impression that this was filled with super hot sex.  Like the entire book.  Like women were getting so turned on that their men were noticing because they were getting more play than ever before.  Was there sex, sure.  Was it hot?  Not particularly.  Nor was it always believable.  Tell me a virginal, naive girl who gets her vajay jay pounded repeatedly and tied up and beaten who is only a little sore afterward.  Then there's the bondage factor.  I just don't get it and most of that was a turn off to me entirely. 

The main character, Anna, just graduated college, refers to her vagina as "down there" multiple times, says "oh my" so often that I wanted to scream after the first three chapters, and apparently could only bite her lip as a reaction to every situation.  The author had such a shallow arsenal of description that she merely repeated the same phrases over and over.  And apparently in her world every person in someone's life would find it normal to tuck a stray lock of hair behind someone's ear since every one of her male characters did that at one point.  I spent so much time rolling my eyes and muttering under my breath that I'm wondering how I forced myself to finish it at all.

I had no idea this crap (unworthy of even self-publishing credit let alone a real publishing house) began life as Twilight fan fiction but now it makes sense - right down to the weird and thrown in love triangle that never was properly developed except as another reason to enrage the jealous boyfriend even when he crossed a line of friendship.  What girl has a close friend try and take advantage of her the first time she gets drunk and then days later acts like it was no big deal and proceeds like nothing happened? Probably the same unreal girl who is clumsy and doesn't think she's very pretty but attracts the attention of the cutest boy at school - or in the city. 

I guess the same crazies who dress up and go to midnight premieres to swoon over seventeen year old kids are the same people this book might appeal to.  As for me, I'll take my smut and my characters a little more realistic.  I'm skipping books two and three because, frankly my dear, I just don't give a damn to even know what happens to these idiotic characters.