Customer Reviews

Fifty Shades of Grey: Book One of the Fifty Shades Trilogy

5 star:		(92)
4 star:		(30)
3 star:		(21)
2 star:		(30)
1 star:		(107)

 

 

I read all three books and I loved them.
The beginning was a little scary, the way he wanted things done. After that it was very interesting.
The ending was excellent!!!!

After you get over the "Shock" of all the Sexual Content... the story lines are ok... but very predictable. (I say Shock but really it is not that bad... a little more descriptive than a Harlequin... But not that far off.) The Second and Third Book is just more of the same thing... over and over... gets kind of redundant after awhile... and again very predictable. I did like Ana's alter egos, it was an interesting way of seeing what she was thinking and the process of her battling her own demons etc... The books were easy to read which is a good thing in my mind.

I can see why there’s been so much hoopla around the book despite it’s horrible, horrible plot and writing. I could devote a whole post on the horrors of the e-mail chains between Anastasia and Christian. Booooring.

But E.L. James pushes the boundaries on the kind of sex that sells — especially the kind of sex that appeals to women.

For too long, it’s been assumed that women don’t want sex for the purposes of “getting off”. We want long-winded relationships, equally long-winded conversations about the future and men who will iron.

So when E.L. James presents with the idea of not just sex for sex but sex with ropes, whips and a “Red Room of Torture”, those of us who have been watching The Notebook, had to look. And we couldn’t turn away.

I feel that Fifty Shades really confronts this issue head on. Is mind-blowing good sex (whatever its form) enough for women? Are you comfortable keeping a man as your sex monkey or will you forever feel like his?

Fifty Shades unapologetically screams “Women love sex” but in its post-coital haze, it quietly asks for all modern women, “But what about love?”

After all the hype, I thought I would give the first book a look. I was curious to see what made these books "better" than the other thousands of sexually explicit novels out there. I'm pretty open minded and sex is important to me, but the stuff in this book is not worth reading. I agree with some of the other reviews that not only is the subject and characters shallow and hard to beleive, but the writing itself is very poorly done. Anyway, congrats to the author. She is making a ton of money and I wish it were me who had wrote them.

I found this book to be fun to read at first, but after reading through more than half of the book, found the repitition of sex adventures to be abit too much. There is a story line in the book and we are finding Grey certainly is a perfectionist and stalker who probably has alot of trauma in early life which we dont find out about. Why else would he be this way. He is rich, smart, and preys on this gal like he just cant help himself. I bought all three books and will read them but will find myself skipping over some of the repititious sex scenes which become monotonous to read...like, lets get to the story soon!! The book is focusing on a young girl who has just finished school and is not experienced in sex. Her life becomes enveloped by this man she meets.
The older author surely expresses her sexual fantasies in this book. Easy to read.

We can say that this novel is a slightly tinted BDSM Cinderella story falling in love with Prince Charming. In this case, a very rich Prince Charming, who is as much Dark Knight than White Knight.
So if you are looking for a fairytale romance, maybe if you are not completely allergic to BDSM, you'll be pleased by the book. If you are looking for a very BDSM novel, forget it. If you are ignorant of everything about BDSM and want to learn a bit more through a novel, it can be a book for you. At least, you'll learn about safewords and standard power exchange contract. But...
Anastasia falls in love with this rich and handsome Alpha male. So, she tries to play the sub for him, but she is not a sub at the base. Yes, she is excited by the little and rare BDSM teasings he does to her, but she constantly tries to dominate by the bottom. I do not know any Dom that would tolerate long someone like her.
What annoyed me the most about this novel is that Anastasia cannot decide. Five minutes she says yes, the five following, it is no, then we start all over again. That's like that for the complete novel. She is not smart enough to understand how she feels about him, about what he is and what he does to her, let alone to add 1 +1 and understand what he, Prince Charming, may feel for her. I've experienced in my life persons unable to make decisions, but she holds the record. In real life, the undecisive persons are very annoying. In a novel, it's worse because you can at least hope that there, you will be entitled to someone able to make here choice in less than 374 pages.
Does anyone read the Volume 2? I just want to know if she finally decides to agree for the f... bidding contract and to fulfill her commitments.

This book is one of the most horrendously written books I've ever read-- and I did read all three in the trilogy to see what happened to the interesting but really obnoxiously irritating main characters. I hadn't read more than a few chapters, before I realized that the novels are essentially a rip-off of Stephenie Meyers' Twilight series, with human beings in all the roles rather than vampires or shape-changers. Christian Gray, the main character is basically Edward Cullen, (he even looks like Edward Cullen) but the monster within Christian is the abuse he suffered as a child raised by a crack addict prostitute, whose clients beat and tortured him. He's adopted at the age of 4 by a nice family, but they don't seem to be clued in enough to realize that none of the therapists they have Christian visit are at all competent or helpful. Nor do they try family-based therapy, which seems a no-brainer, given the mother's supposed to be such a clever doctor, the parents are so understanding and accepting of Christian's past and the family is rolling in money. Enough said. Anyway, Christian's adoptive family is the parallel of Edward Cullen's adoptive family, only the mother is the doctor, rather thant the father. The heroine, Anastasia Steele, is definitely a Bella hybrid. She is clumsy, doesn't realize how extraordinarily beautiful she is and is almost completely unaware that every good-looking guy in her life is basically madly in love (lust) with her and has long, flowing brown hair. Bella's father is "Charlie" and Anastasia's beloved step-father is "Ray." Both have child-like, irresponsible but loveable mothers. Both are only children. Both are geographically removed from their mothers with Bella and Ana on the west coast in Washington state and their mothers in the south-east. Also like Bella, Anastasia is totally uncomfortable with Christian giving her expensive presents and isn't at all interested in his vast amounts of wealth, because you know, she's apparently above all that. (Yet, as the books progress, she certainly learns to adjust to his wealth, cars, homes, vacations in an awful hurry, with the occasional reminder, of course, that she doesn't really feel like she earned any of these luxuries and that they make her feel guilty. That said, she might protest the gifts, but she keeps them and uses them-- just to make Christian happy, of course.) When Christian turns his attention on her, like Bella with Edward, she can't understand what he can possibly see in poor, plain her and and keeps thinking that he'll leave her,which is more than she can bear, even when she barely knows him. Meanwhile, as Edward feels about a real monster, Christian feels about being monstrous because of his sexual needs-- domination, whips, paddles, nipple clamps, inflecting pain and taking complete control etc., etc. Like Edward with Bella, Christian warns Anastasia to stay away from him, but like Bella with Edward, Anastasia doesn't listen and experiences a lot of suffereing because of it. Early in the first book, Anastasia makes it clear to Christian that she doesn't have a "submissive bone" in her body and we're somehow supposed to believe that this intelligent and intuitive girl simply comes to love being physically abused in Christian's "play room" because it's so sexually arousing. Uh huh. Sure. Works for me-- not! Unfortunately, I couldn't suspend one moment of my disbelief here. To me, she was just an idiotic, weak-willed pathetic twit of a girl with no self-esteem whatsoever. Pretty much Bella Swan, in fact. There are so many more parallels to Twilight, I can't list them all. Suffice it to say, Edward and Bella rule these books in the form of Christian and Anastasia. One of the worst things about the writing itself which was particularly annoying to me was the vernacular used by the supposedly typical American characters. For some strange reason, a never-ending flow of British words and expressions come gushing out of the characters' mouths. It's so anomolous, it's distracting! If you're a British writer and you decide you're going to write what you know, and intend to have your characters say what you're used to saying or hearing, then shouldn't you at least set your story in the place where people speak like that?!!! It is so beyond-stupid to hear my mother's typically Brit sayings pouring out of Anastasia's and Christian's mouths. Then again, so many of the words and expressions are just plain stupid that the reader must copy Anatasia's much-repeated rolling of esys. Also, if Ana said "Holy crap" one more time, I think I would have thrown my my computer across the room. Same with Christian saying, "Laters, baby" and "Come" like British royalty might say, rather than the more American "I'll see you later" and "Let's go," or "Come with me." The other thing I detested was James' use of Anastasia's "Inner Goddess" and her "sub-conscious" to emphasize her sudden interest in weird sex acts and her oh-my-gosh-I'm-not-worthy-of-this-man-so-I-mustn't-antagonize-him rationalization for not standing up for herself and her dignity as a human being. Both are very unsuccessful, anvil-fisted attempts at using literary devices; both are painful to read and fail miserably. Here's my biggest thing: Christian is damaged emotionally and psychologically. He was introduced into the Sub/Dom sex scene when he was further sexually abused at the age of 15 by one of his mother's friends. This unhealthy relationship went on for quite some time. Yet, he thinks the pedophile woman helped him, because she introduced him to rough sex. Really? Come on! Anyone who's suffered the abuse that Christian did needs gentleness, caring and real love; not depraved painful sex acts meant to demean and objectify a person. Anastasia is supposed to know this, yet she encourages Christian to devalue and objectify her, even though that cannot be psychologically healthy for someone who's trying to learn to take and give pleasure without the need to inflict pain. He even tells her he feels like an alcoholic and that the paddles and cuffs induce hunger in him for the more hardcore stuff, yet still, she persists, instead of supporting his recovery. Lovely, selfless girl, no doubt! Pretty sick relationship that the author can't make normal and loving in my opinion, no matter how she tries to justify it. Finally, the writer needs to throw her thesaurus away. Simple and direct is best. Words that don't mean what you think they do and words that most readers would have to look up in a dictionary are not the best choices and do not prove how intelligent and articulate the author is.

So, to me, this book is typical fan-fiction, which is what it was written to be. It's popular I think, because of the naughtiness of the ad nauseum descriptions of sex and because of the somewhat intriguing nature of the main characters. Yes, they're interesting-- as interesting as copies of characters from someone else's books can be-- and yes, I did want to see what happened to them at the end of the series. But, I'd never pay money for these books and I don't think anyone else should either.

- Patti McGhie

If you're looking for a story that inspires you to find inner peace, solve worldwide conflicts or recounts great world history, these are not the books for you. If you want to read a tale about two people that have lifestyles and issues similar to your own, and fall in love in a typical uncomplicated way, these books are not for you. If you want a psychological analysis and how-to book about BDSM, these books are really not for you.

If, however, you want to sit down at the end of YOUR typical day, having dealt with YOUR battles and routine, and escape to another reality, with easy to read text, Atypical personalities and characters, in a fantasy environment that is very different from yours, these may be the books for you.

If you have somewhat enjoyed trashy love stories in the past, and are looking for something more explicit, with a love story that is probably unrealisticly passionate but so delicious to follow, with a side dish of suspense, family drama and introduction to a different lifestyle, these books may be for you...

Yes, this story was first written for fanfiction. If you've read the original story, the fan fiction story and this published version, yes, you'll see the resemblance. But the premise of an inexperienced heroine meeting a damaged experienced hero, that is lured from his darkness and saved by this female is one of the most frequent females fantasies... I have read many, many a book with this story line...

Also, fanfiction is usually released chapter by chapter, with 1, 2 or more weeks in between. When one reads it cover to cover, it does tend to get a bit repetive and you may feel like these two have way too much sex! And she repeats the same words a lot (oh my!). But hey, don't we all in the course of a day!

Overall, a great story and escape, that will not win litterary awards but appeals to many women (and men) in the form of an easy to read atypical love story...

Enjoy!

I bought this book after hearing how 'hot' it was. I couldn't even finish the book. The writing was painful to read. I hoped that once the 'action' started, the book would become bearable. It turns out it didn't. When friends ask what I thought of the book, my answer always doubts that the author has ever had sex since she cannot write about it. If anyone loves to read to be entertained, loves reading more than watching movies or TV, and loves reading to feel the experiences that are described in the novel, do not read this book.

Like other reviewers, I would give this book zero stars if I could. I normally don't write reviews of books that I don't enjoy, but this book is so over the top HORRIFIC that I feel I should warn people to save heir money and time on anything other than this book.
Flat, insipid characters, poorly written, even the sex scenes were simply a cut and paste operation. The same boring sex in the same words over and over and over and yet over again.
For a review that is worth reading go to goodreadsdotcom and look at the review from Katrina Lumsden -- infinitely more engaging and better written, oh my... I wish I had read it before I lost time that I will never get back.