Okay so I decided I had to find out what all the buzz about this book was about. S&M??? Oooooo!! How fun!!! So I downloaded this book about a month ago and have had such a hard time getting into it. I have to preface this blog post by telling you, quite emphatically, I know NOTHING about the S&M lifestyle, so like many readers, I am curious so what the heck???
Here's my opinion so far, and I'm only on chapter 5.
I can't believe this book is so popular first of all; I'm surmising it's because of the subject matter: what other author has written a mainstream erotica book about S&M?? No one (that I'm aware of). She's truly a pioneer, I'll give her that. But in my opinion, her writing is juvenile at best.
First of all, her characters are SO one-dimensional. They have no depth whatsoever. As a reader, I could care less about either the protagonist or the leading man, Christian Grey. The protagonist is laughable. She is 22 years old, and a not only a virgin (yeah right) but she's also never been in love. Never really even kissed a guy. So here she is with the AMAZINGLY PERFECT LOOKING, BILLIONAIRE CHRISTIAN GREY who is head over heels in lust with her. She’s obviously a hottie or he wouldn’t be interested. He is textbook "Fabio"--chiseled features, insanely successful, in his twenties and already a billionaire. They are not only unbelievable but they are boring!!! The dialogue lacks any kind of excitement because the characters are not interesting people. They remind me of stick figures who are more like puppets. They keep moving but we don't know why and we soon don't care to find out.
The author's writing reminds me of my writing classes in college where someone has an idea for a novel, and they buy one of those guides, "How to write a novel in 21 days" or something like that. It's like she was copying some sort of formula and just typed it all out without any real feeling. There is no depth to either character. The reader doesn't really care why Christian Grey is enamored with her (Anastasia). She is inept, annoying, and so uninteresting. Other than being horny for him, we know little else about her. There is no back story on her (so far, like I said, I'm on chapter 5, and frankly at this point, I couldn’t care less) other than she's in college and has a roommate smarter than her. Seriously!!! I am not kidding. That is all we know about her. We do know Christian is adopted and that's about it. He's gorgeous, insanely rich, impeccably dressed, and crazy for her.
At this point where I stopped reading last night (because the book put me to sleep yet again), Christian has just shown her his "playroom"--his S&M room. She's in shock, and she's dismayed because she had hoped for a romantic night of passionate sex and falling asleep in his arms, but he said, "I don't ' make love'. I 'f**k hard'". Then when she admits she's a virgin, he feels sorry for her and tells her he will "make love" to her before venturing to torture her for his pleasure. Whatever. I don't even care if he changes his mind and kicks her out for being so annoyingly naive and coy. In fact, that would probably make the story more interesting!!!
I have really struggled to read it just so I can see what all the fuss is. And I will keep punishing myself (hahah, pun intended) to finish it out of mere curiosity. I keep falling asleep so it will take me awhile to finish it.
I do love his name; that's about all I like about this book.
Tell me your thoughts!
