Book Review : Fifty Shades of Grey by E L James

This time around I managed to finish reading the first of the three books in Fifty Shades Trilogy in just about a week. I covered about half of the book during the first weekend of Raya when we went to visit to a lot of the family and relatives's houses, in which I spent reading the book instead of socializing. I never really liked my mother's side of the family in the first place. So, I finally managed to finish the first book last Saturday, while getting my hair cut. *new haircut... yeay* Okay, let's not waste any more time, on to the review.

Synopsis

When literature student Anastasia Steele goes to interview young entrepreneur Christian Grey, she encounters a man who is beautiful, brilliant, and intimidating. The unworldly, innocent Ana is startled to realize she wants this man and, despite his enigmatic reserve, finds she is desperate to get close to him. Unable to resist Ana’s quiet beauty, wit, and independent spirit, Grey admits he wants her, too—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 family—Grey is a man tormented by demons and consumed by the need to control. When the couple embarks on a daring, passionately physical affair, Ana discovers Christian Grey’s secrets and explores her own dark desires.

Verdict

If I could (and I will now), I would like to plagiarize the phrase 'fifty shades' from our dear E L James and give my ultimate comment for this comment : FIFTY SHADES OF ODIOUS. Seriously, I don't know how to begin with this book. So many execrable factors that I might as well be ornery about it.

First of all, and most importantly the characters. 'Oh Ana!' Anastasia, Ana, Miss Steele, or whatever she wishes to identify herself as, is the most ridiculous character I've ever read so far in any adult books. Fine, she's a young lady in the book but that doesn't excuse her behaviour as teenage girl who proclaims to be virgin and yet have a very insatiable sexual appetite. We're talking about a young lady, who have the strongest carnal desire as any homosexual male (wanting to fuck anytime they could) after being deflowered by the oh-so-Adonis Christian Grey. She's naive and gullible, seemed so innocent, but yet repulsively annoying with her non-stop 'flushing & frowning', indecisiveness, lustiness, and so many more irksome behaviour. What I don't really about Anastasia is her resolve or her characteristics. It is as if the author is constantly changing her traits as the story progress, like an ongoing project or something.

And of course, the inexplicable fifty-shades-of-fucked-up himself, Christian Grey. Being describe as the perfect man : beautiful, smoldering good looks, charming, attractive, handsome, gentleman, rich, successful, poised, graceful, and bla bla bla ... the perfect Man, imagined by all female human. Makes perfect sense, right? Because this book really is written by a woman, and secretly, all the women in the world wish they have someone like this in their arms. That's fucked-up. But what's more fucked up is his serious Dominative-need. Oh my, BDSM. How can someone so perfect be so wrong and into the kinky stuff? Perhaps I'll get to understand more as I finish reading the second book.

Then comes the language and wordplay Which is another shade of horrendous. The language is really sub-par and nothing worth being an impressive bestseller at all. I really don't know how publishers can consider the overly used, repetitions to be a good piece of writing for publishing. I don't know just how many times have I read the same sentences such as, 'I flushed...crimson/scarlet/red', 'cupped my chin', 'frowns', 'blushes', 'cupped my breast', 'finds his release....', 'nuzzle', and more. Even quite some variations of 'crap, holy crap...etc.' Just for your sake, I found this guy (DS from Los Angeles) who wrote a review on it on Amazon and  he scanned for the repetitions inside this book and check it out : 

Following up on their suggestions with my ever-useful Kindle search function, I have discovered that Ana says "Jeez" 81 times and "oh my" 72 times. She "blushes" or "flushes" 125 times, including 13 that are "scarlet," 6 that are "crimson," and one that is "stars and stripes red." (I can't even imagine.) Ana "peeks up" at Christian 13 times, and there are 9 references to Christian's "hooded eyes," 7 to his "long index finger," and 25 to how "hot" he is (including four recurrences of the epic declarative sentence "He's so freaking hot."). Christian's "mouth presses into a hard line" 10 times. Characters "murmur" 199 times, "mutter" 49 times, and "whisper" 195 times (doesn't anyone just talk?), "clamber" on/in/out of things 21 times, and "smirk" 34 times. Christian and Ana also "gasp" 46 times and experience 18 "breath hitches," suggesting a need for prompt intervention by paramedics. Finally, in a remarkable bit of symmetry, our hero and heroine exchange 124 "grins" and 124 "frowns"... which, by the way, seems an awful lot of frowning for a woman who experiences "intense," "body-shattering," "delicious," "violent," "all-consuming," "turbulent," "agonizing" and "exhausting" orgasms on just about every page.

Now, isn't that just a lot of repetitions? And a sign of terrible literature. I really don't know what else to 'debase' and 'demean' this book anymore than it is an overrated bestseller. Despite being aroused by the contents and sexual foreplay in the books once in a while, the books just really failed as an erotica. Honestly,  E L James have a very great idea on this book except that she had failed to carefully select her story and themed it as an erotica. It has great dreamy plot to be as a romance novel, but a terrible erotica. The sexual part is lost on me. Truthfully, I just don't get how this book really get to be a bestseller.

I remembered the last part of the story when Ana finally break-free from Christian's insane 'kinks' and finally firm her grasp on how fucked-up Mr. Grey is and leave him. That was the only moment in the book that I kept re-reading again and again because it was the only part of the story that interests me. All this while, I wasn't even absorbed into the story and finally when Ana gets her some sense of reality, at the end of the book, was the only part that I loved it. That just shows how badly written the book it. Perhaps I could have better luck in the second book, Fifty Shades Darker, which I seriously doubting whether I should start reading or not.