Review: 50 Shades of Grey Trilogy

Last weekend, I heard about 50 Shades of Grey.  It was everywhere.  Since I will read anything I can get my grubby little fingers on, I downloaded the first book onto my Kindle app Monday night.  50 Shades is one of those books that you start reading and you don't realize how much you've read until you've finished the book 4:00 am Tuesday morning and you have to get up in two and a half hours to get ready for work.

Yes, really.

50 Shades of Grey is a first person narrative, told through Anastasia Steele's POV.  She's a 21 year old college student who meets Christian Grey, mega-rich CEO and dominant.  He believes that he is unlovable and that he doesn't have a heart.  She tries to crack his tough exterior shell while trying to work the acts of a submissive into her limited repertoire.

There are quite a few similarities between Twilight and 50 Shades.  So many that it seems like the author renamed the characters, made Edward a human and then elaborated on the sex scenes.  There is even a "hitching" scene (you fellow Twihards know what I mean).

The similarities are so numerous, I don't know how James hasn't violated any copyright issues.  Case in point:

Twilight:

"You really shouldn't do that to people," I criticized. "It's hardly fair."

"Do what?"

"Dazzle them like that — she's probably hyperventilating in the kitchen right now."

He seemed confused.

"Oh, come on," I said dubiously. "You have to know the effect you have on people."

He tilted his head to one side, and his eyes were curious. "I dazzle people?"

"You haven't noticed? Do you think everybody gets their way so easily?"

He ignored my questions. "Do I dazzle you ?"

"Frequently," I admitted.

Fifty Shades:

"You know, it's really not fair."  I glance down at the Formica tabletop, tracing a pattern on it with my index finger, trying to sound nonchalant.

"What's not fair?"

"How you disarm people.  Women.  Me."

"Do I disarm you?"

I snort.  "All the time."

See?

And yet I couldn't put the books down.  EL James is not a very good writer and I still kept reading. I'm not saying that I'm a better writer...but I also haven't signed a seven figure book deal. Hopefully with all of that money, she can buy a decent thesaurus.

James's repetitious writing is repetitious.  Christian Grey tells Anastasia Steele that he is 50 shades of fu messed up, but James can only think of one word to describe Grey: mercurial. And that word is used often.  I ran a search for mercurial on my Kindle and came up with five hits in the first book, fourteen hits between books two and three.  When you read a set of books back-to-back-to-back, that's enough to cause mercury poisoning.

Ya know?

And if I never hear from Steele's inner goddess again (she's mentioned 120 times between all three books), that would be too soon.  I've come to the conclusion that she deserves to be slapped in a very non-erotic way.  Just sayin'.

Speaking of repetition, the graphic sex scenes quickly become tiresome.  Truthfully, they did nothing for me (and my husband is deployed, so that should tell you something).  James seems to be embarrassed to talk dirty, even as she describes the kinky things Grey is doing to Steele in great detail, the author prefers to call Steele's genitals "my sex" and "there".

Book one has a cliffhanger ending.  Which is fine, because book two picks up right where one left off.  And I like that.  I enjoy being able to pick up a book without the author rehashing everything that happened in the previous books.  I bought the second book Tuesday night and this time, I read it over the course of three days.  I had to know if the broken Christian Grey could ever be made whole.

For those who care about my lowly opinion, don't bother reading the third book.  It's a waste of time & money (IMHO).  I swear the only conversation they have for 90% of the book goes like this:

"I'm worried you're going to leave me." 

"But I love you.  Why can't you see that?" 

"I know.  Let's have vanilla sex."

"What's wrong now?"

"I'm worried you're going to leave me because I'm not enough for you." 

"Why would you think that?  I need you." 

"I know.  You need to be spanked."

Rinse and repeat.  Throw in a crazy stalker / arsonist / chase scene and that's the entire book it in a nutshell.

And on a side note: Christian educates young Anastasia regarding the use of safe words.  She decides to use the word "popsicle".  Spoiler (highlight to read): At the end of book three, Taylor's daughter and Anastasia's & Christian's son, Teddy are eating popsicles.  Why James chose to use that as a safe word, I'll never know. On a scale of 1 - 10 of the creepy scale, that rates an 11 in my book.