Book Lovers Inc.
Romance Novel Reviews, Author Interviews, Commentary
Review: Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
Format read: ebook
Series: Book #1 in the Fifty Shades series
Genre: Erotic, Romance, BDSM
Release Date: 26 May 2011
Number of pages: 356 pages
Publisher: The Writer’s Coffee Shop Publishing House
Formats available: ebook, paperback
Purchasing Info: Goodreads, Author’s Website, Amazon
When literature student Anastasia Steele is drafted to interview the successful young entrepreneur Christian Grey for her campus magazine, she finds him attractive, enigmatic and intimidating. Convinced their meeting went badly, she tries to put Grey out of her mind – until he happens to turn up at the out-of-town hardware store where she works part-time.
The unworldly, innocent Ana is shocked to realize she wants this man, and when he warns her to keep her distance it only makes her more desperate to get close to him. Unable to resist Ana’s quiet beauty, wit, and independent spirit, Grey admits he wants her – 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 adoptive family – Grey is man tormented by demons and consumed by the need to control. When the couple embarks on a passionate, physical and daring affair, Ana learns more about her own dark desires, as well as the Christian Grey hidden away from public scrutiny.
Can their relationship transcend physical passion? Will Ana find it in herself to submit to the self-indulgent Master? And if she does, will she still love what she finds?
Erotic, amusing, and deeply moving, the Fifty Shades Trilogy is a tale that will obsess you, possess you, and stay with you forever.
The first thing that brought Fifty Shades of Grey to my attention was mention of a possible movie deal and how Stephenie Meyer would react to this. Wait! What? Where was the connection between a much loved (or much criticized, depending on your view point) YA vamp series and a book that was being touted as “BDSM-light”? Once I researched a little further, I found the connection in Fifty Shades’ origin as a fan fiction. Having read FanFic, I figured that the now-published author E.L. James would have gone to great pains to remove any elements that would be reminiscent of the best selling original franchise…(I was wrong, to a degree.)
I had to feed my curiosity and attempt to find out first hand. Fifty Shades of Grey contains a lot of familiar components found in many romance novels: the innocent young woman, the larger than life man, the twists and turns that threaten to tear them apart. These were easy to swallow, and I for one am quite happy to let myself be swept into a sea of unreality. It’s a welcome escape from real life, right? But I could still see shades (maybe not fifty of them, but enough) of the Twilight canon. I pushed aside the nagging similarities and focused on the differences.
What I enjoyed most about this novel was the character growth, much of it being tied into the Dom/Sub lifestyle of the male protagonist (a far cry from an overprotective 100 year-old teenager.) While he struggled with his inner demons, he outwardly sought domination to alleviate them. When Ana comes along and tests all of his resolves, it was great to see his personality gradually changing, I personally cannot say if what he was dealing with would be so easily remedied, not having a degree in human psychology, but it was nice to see hope.
The story moved along swift enough that I didn’t want to put it down. It didn’t always take the easy route, especially as it drew to its conclusion (which forces you to read book two immediately.) There were times of humour, and I know I’m reiterating what many have said before, but the e-mails between Ana and Christian are worth reading the book alone.
Alternately, the ridiculous names used, for example two security guards, named Ryan and Reynolds…I kid you not…drew more than a few snorts from me. And for an erotic story, as Ana refers to her private parts much more than once as “down there”, it seemed at times a little uptight. (I thought Ana may have gotten beyond the innocent sex talk, but not so much.)
Undoubtedly, there’s been a lot of press and hype about this book. Whether it’s worth it or not depends on how you look at it. The story line is a bit contrived and there are huge issues with editing (I was frequently all eye-twitchy about it.) And while I could find faults in many ways, I’m going to say I really did enjoy reading book one in this series. Now if you ask me about book two…well that’s a whole different matter 😉
I give Fifty Shades of Grey 4 stars
Share This Post
Subscribe and stay up-to-date
20 Comments
« Review: Silver: Humanotica, Book 1 by Darcy Abriel Next Post
Around the Bookish News: Week-in-Review »
Unfortunately Google Friend Connect will stop working for non Blogger blogs at the start of March.
To stay up-to-date use one of the other options above to subscribe to the newest Book Lovers Inc. action.Thank you!
| |||||||||
| 5 Stars: Perfect! I Love It! | |||||||||
| 4 Stars: Awesome Book! | |||||||||
| 3 Stars: I Liked It! | |||||||||
| 2 Stars: Not bad, but maybe not for me. | |||||||||
| 1 Star: Didn't like it! Did Not Finish it. | |||||||||
 | | | | | |||||
Blog RSS Feed
Follow Me on Twitter
My Facebook
Good of you to read it Jackie! Something that is hyped so much, is usually something I avoid out of principle. And I am glad you liked it.
Thanks, aurian! I usually shy away from over-hyped books too. It’s sets too high a bar for expectations, making it so easy to fall short. This just had so many elements in it that I was curious about.
I must be one of the few people that didn’t really like this book… I can totally get what the hype is all about (well, not totally but I get it 🙂 ) but the writing style bothered me a lot and let me not start about all those inner goddess mentions and those “down there” you already mentioned Jackie.
Yes! The inner goddess ad the subconscious! It was like reading through a split personality’s eyes at times :p Once I realized how bad the editing was and the major repetitions (let’s not forget the “Oh my!” <--which I may turn into a drinking game for book 3), I tried to ignore those parts and focus on the characters.
Oh the “Oh My” comments! How could I forget those… Or the “Holy sth”… The editing was pretty bad and along with my being unable to connect with the characters (and the fact they had a Sub/Dom relationship had nothing to do with not liking them) resulted to just feel that it was a mediocre book.
I think the success of this book, is the fact it combines so many successful tried and true ingredients from other books and tropes. But it definitely borrows a lot from Twilight. I didn’t realise this when I read the story but looking back and seeing comments picking out the similarities and there were many, it was pretty evident. I think the fact this came about from a fanfiction and helped to break out erotic romance in the mainstream is going to run and run and I don’t think the hype and the controversy is going to die down.
Totally, Has. A lot of formulaic stuff in there. There was also characters named Taylor and Welch, which I couldn’t help associating with Taylor Lautner and Michael Welch (who plays Mike in Twi).
Its catapult to fame may help other books and authors claim more readers, but I hope that with HarperCollins taking it on now, that major edits are in its future…though I doubt it. They will have to capitalize on the fervor here and now, not allowing it to fade from the spotlight just yet, right?
When you and I discussed it before, you mentioned the books could have been combined into one. After reading two, I now completely agree!
Wait till you read book 3! 😛 LOL
I just finished this book yesterday and had to start book 2 immediately. I completely agree with your review. I heard a lot about the book, a few months ago actually, and people said to read it, especially since I loved twilight and read some other BDSM authors. I at first had a hard time reading it, the editing ugh. But as the story went along it got better and the E-mails between the 2 really made the story, I completely agree with you, read the books for the emails. I can not wait to see how the rest of this story goes.
Well, Tanya, I have good news and bad news 😀 The bad is that, to me, the editing got worse through book two. The good news is that there are more e-mails 🙂
I probably wouldn’t have bought book 3 if I hadn’t picked them all up at once, but I have been encouraged to see the story through to its end. I will, however, take a break before reading #3. I hope you enjoy the rest of them anyway. I think it’s worth checking them out if nothing more than to satisfy curiousities.
Yeah for more emails, it really was my favorite part. I am sure people probablly are readign them for the sex scenes but the emails made the book for me. I think other authors, Maya Banks, Lora Leigh, Jaci Burton are better reads. I had to start book two just because of how the author ended book 1, I feel invested now and have to see how it ends.
I think I’d like to read Jaci Burton next, but I’ve heard the others are great too.
I am part of a yahoo group that raved about these, so I got them after all 3 were out so I could keep reading. Then all the publicity hit and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to read these. Thanks for the review, I think I’ll give it a try when I get some time, but I’m not feeling the rush to read them.
Thank you much for reviewing this, Jackie! I’ve been so curious as to what the whole hubub is about, though I suppose I should not be surprised that it’s in part due to a story that began as Twilight fanfic (much like Gabriel’s Inferno).
I have to admit, when I first heard about this book, I was intrigued. Then I heard about its origins and thought, “meeeh.” With so much excellent, well-written and well-edited erotic romance out there, this one now has to be flawless for me to read it despite the crazy fervor and Twi-origins. ^__^
As for the movie possibilities, I sincerely hope it’s heresay. Some things just don’t need to be adapted, even if they can be adapted. lol
Thanks for the review. If the editing is even worse than TWILIGHT itself, I’m going to have to take a pass on this one. After all, at least TWILIGHT had all the paranormal stuff to keep me interested (how her world is different than other paranormal worlds), I don’t see what I could find interesting in this book that would overcome bad editing.
Also, I doubt I can read “oh my” without hearing it in George Takei’s voice.
LOL! Ryan and Reynolds? Haha
Why do people like this book? As a story I can see the titilliation, but what a grammatical stinker. I’m on page 150 or so (iPad eBook) and can read along when ‘prose’ comes out and goes SMACK! jarring me from the story.
‘Sighed huskily?’ Oh man, get an editor lady. That one shines bright among a firmament of wordy mangles that has no business asking for money to be read.
Author’s hatchet-face English is really bad when author alleges the heroine is some graduating Lit major with a fine taste of the written word. The irony, oh brother I want my ten bucks back. I’ll finish it because I need to Red Room myself never to be stupid enough to pick up trash like this again. Matter of fact, I’m writing my own book if this pseudo-literate slob can do it so can I.
I read books 2 & 3, thought maybe book 1 would be scandalous and good. Now I am hearing that the problems I saw in those two books is just as bad. I hope the dialogue is better between the two. I did however really like the emails; takes emails and texts to another level. Anyone know of any good Dom/Sub-light stories?
Ok, so I bought this book because it was on the top bestsellers list for so long. I wanted to see what all the “buzz” was about.
This is not your typical boy meets girl let’s date and fall in love romance. Christian wants to dominate Anastasia and he wants her submissive. He comes up with a contract that he wants her to sign. She’s torn between her love for him and her fear of him.
I am on the 3rd book a few pages in but confused how book 2 ended and how book 3 starts….it seems like I missed the wedding?