Review: Fifty Shades of Grey

Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I’ve tried to avoid Fifty Shades of Grey as much as possible, as I did not wish to get caught up in the debate that surrounds it. Even without reading or watching the film, things I had heard left me with very strong feelings towards the book. Despite my best intentions, however, I found myself engaging.

It started with a trip to the cinema with my friend. It was a surprise movie – her boyfriend had backed out, and as they’d already brought tickets I ended up going. I should have known what movie it was considering her boyfriend backed out – I should have known it was not a new superhero movie we would be watching. You guessed it, I ended up watching a Fifty Shades movie. It was the second one, and I did not enjoy it at all. It had no plot, no substance. I did not care for the characters. I did not find any of it sexy. Of course, a part of me questioned whether this was a result of having not seen or read the first book. A part of me was mildly interested at this point, just to see if the first book was as bad as the second movie.

Of course, I was not going to go and spend money on this book. I’d heard enough to know I wouldn’t be spending my hard-earned cash on it. However, when we were having a bonfire one night, I saved the trilogy from being thrown on the fire. No matter how bad a book, I am not the kind of person who will let them burn. Thus, I found myself with the entire trilogy.

It took a lot to work up the courage to dive in, and as soon as I did I started to regret my decision. The Honest Trailer Guy on YouTube makes me chuckle every time I watch a Fifty Shades Honest Trailer, because he hates the series so much. The thing to make me chuckle the most was the bad lines from the book. No way could they be real? It turns out, they were – and they were not the worst lines. Honestly, the ‘inner goddess’ made me want to shoot myself. Nobody has an internal monologue like that, and it drove me insane.

I will be honest, there were a couple of moments where the book was not quite as bad as I thought it would be. A one-point-five-star rating appeared here and there. As a whole, though, I had to force myself through this one. It was hard work. Painful work.

There was no plot. The characters were bland. The writing sent me crazy. The way BDSM was dealt with – yeah, that one I could rant and rave about for a long time. There are few things I hate more than badly done BDSM, where people send the wrong kind of message about the lifestyle. There’s a clear difference between authors who practice BDSM and those who have simply researched it and thought ‘oh, that sounds kinky, let’s add it’ without understanding more. I could rant and rave forever about how it was done in this book (even if most of the book was vanilla), but there are people who have done so already – and much more elegantly than I ever could.

I’m no stranger to smut, and I know there are much better books out there. In fact, there are better freebies out there. I could point you in the right direction, but as I’m so late to the Fifty Shades hate bandwagon, you’ve probably already been directed towards said books.

Will I be continuing the trilogy? No. I do not need to read the next two books to know how it ends – creepy stalker gets his happily ever after with the dull leading lady. For once, I think I should have let books burn.

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