Sunday, July 1, 2012

Fifty Shades of Grey Review




I'm not much of a literary genius. No, I read for entertainment and don't usually read between the lines. I always found it really annoying when high school English teachers would ask what you thought objects, people and actions meant.

I heard about Fifty Shades of Grey earlier this year when it started showing up on my Facebook newsfeed. I read some reviews on it and when I heard it had some connection to Twilight I said there was no way I pick it up.

I read Twilight in 2008 after I a few friends were raving about it. I thought it had to be amazing. The last book that I picked up because of a whole bunch of hype was the Harry Potter series. I'm not normally a huge fan of fantasy/sci-fi, but I loved Harry Potter and thought Twilight might be similar. Boy, I was so wrong. Twilight was poorly written, characters lacked development and personality, and had vampires. Really vampires. Who on earth wants to be around vampires. Vampires suck blood. Gross.

To me, FSoG is Twilight on Viagra. I didn't have much interest in reading it, but now that I work for a company that seen our sales sky-rocket from FSoG, I thought it would be important to read.

Anastasia has no self-confidence and not really any personality. The story doesn't develop into much and the mystery around Mr. Grey starts to get really old. Just tell me already. The story doesn't need to be over 200 pages. I stalled after reading about 150 pages. I didn't touch the book for about 2 weeks and then we a friend mentioned how it might end, I was intrigued again.

I also find this book a tad bit scary. The kinky sex doesn't bother me nearly as much as the humiliation and dominance. If this relationship between these two adults didn't involve a contract wouldn't this be considered an abusive relationship. He's extremely jealous, tracks her phone, follows her to Georgia, threatens to beat her and actually hits her. This is something I have a hard time wrapping my head around.

Drives me nuts when every person in a book is hot or extremely good-looking. Was there anyone in this book that wasn't perfect!?

Oh, and the fact that this book takes place in the U.S. with all the main characters from the U.S. and the author is from Great Britain. When I first started reading the book, I thought their language was extremely proper and very English. When I learned the author was from Britain, it made more sense. Shows her laziness or lack of knowledge of American culture. The author obviously had a thesaurus on hand as well.

This book doesn't offer much, but it has been interesting to learn about a BDSM relationship. I knew BDSM existed, but I didn't know much about what went on. I think there have been positives for a lot of women who are spicing up their sex lives and trying new things.

In the end, I understand the hype, but this book isn't great. It might be worth reading for the learning, but other than that, you're not missing much.