This contains spoilers, if you haven’t read the books don’t read this.
And don’t be all, I’ll read it anyways because I have no intention of reading the stupid books, because you’re a liar and you will. Eventually.
So, soooo, many of you have recommended I read the Fifty Shades of Grey Trilogy by E.L. James, and I have promptly ignored you, because who has time to read? I’m a mom, I have three kids and dinner to put on the table OMG DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW BUSY I AM WITH MY DVR RIGHT NOW!?
But, with my recent travel obligations and desire to forget the fact that I’m in an airplane, suddenly a steamy trilogy didn’t seem so bad.
I read book one in about 24 hours. Despite the fact that it is, to date, one of the more poorly written and edited books I have ever read, in fact, I feel dirty even having paid money for it.
Also it’s lady porn.
No exaggeration.
I read lady porn at gate G6 at the Madison airport for two hours next to this guy…
Oh. My.
He was probably curing AIDS on his laptop, and I was blushy and shifting in my seat, reading about sex, in my Spanx.
In true EVERY BOOK BEING WRITTEN RIGHT NOW THAT MILEY CYRUS’ BOYFRIEND COULD POTENTIALLY STAR IN THE MOVIE VERSION OF fashion, Fifty Shades of Grey features a lovely young woman with a overly dramatic name, that goes from tolerable to face punch in about five chapters.
You know, the old awkward virgin meets poorly described hot bajillionaire with an Audi who, through a series of erotic run ins and lip biting, goes on to make a series of melodramatic and WTF!? decisions story.
Speaking of WTF, um…I’m not entirely convinced that E.L. James isn’t a pen name for a one, Jim Bob Duggar, because for 372 pages, I was shouting VAGINA, WE CALL IT A VAGINA. Not her “sex” or her “there,” the word is vagina.
I don’t love saying it out loud either, but I also don’t write porn for a living, mostly because it’d read something like “hey, let’s do that thing where my pee pee tingles.”
By the time I boarded my plane, I was completely entranced by the lewd sex acts of Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey. Often giggling for no apparent reason, and touching my wrists, disappointed they didn’t hurt from being tied together. I would have moments of complete paranoia about the lady sitting next to me and I’d be all, I’m just a girl, sitting on an airplane, asking you to stop looking at my Kindle, because I’m totally just reading about Afghanistan, and not reading about bondage at all.
I loved the emails exchanges, hated the trite oh my’s and aloof college girl antics. My 2 year old has an iPod and asks for her gummy vitamin everyday, how Anastasia made it to her twenties without owning or knowing how to use a laptop, or grasping the concept of taking a birth control pill everyday is beyond me.
My biggest struggle is picturing the characters, which, I assume, will be something left entirely to my imagination, because there is positively no way these books could ever be made into a movie that would at all do it justice, without being a straight up porno. Plus I heard Octavia Spencer doesn’t do BDSM.
Fifty Shades of Grey gave me what Twilight and Hunger Games didn’t. Hot sex. Not vague or obtuse vampire honeymoon sex. The dirty kind of sex real people have.
Except for the whole period thing. Nobody’s that excited about period sex.
On to book 2.
Want to talk more trashy books? Find my Hunger Games reviews here!
I just finished this book too and the way I described it to a co-worker was “great sex scenes, terrible everything else”.
I read it at my desk on my lunch breaks at work. I spent every hour completely paranoid and whipping my head around every 5 minutes to make sure my boss wasn’t reading over my shoulder.
Yes! This is totally the best poorly written book ever. Also, WTF on the tampon thing? I think I died a little when I read that. Does that…does that actually happen? Wait. I don’t want to know.
THANK YOU. I was like, wait…he pulled her tampon out? I don’t even think Andy knows tampons go INSIDE the vagina, let alone that you have to pull a string to remove them.
THIS IS LUDACRIS.
(Yes, I solely spell that word like that now. Way to go, rap.)
Yes it does happen – normally at the beginning of the relationship when every day without sex is just not acceptable. 12 years down the line – no it no longer happens :0(
Period sex …. Ewww. To quote my husband “there are limits to my love”.
It’s true. Heard it from a friend.
If you like this, check out: The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy is a series of three novels written by American author Anne Rice under the pseudonym of A. N. Roquelaure. The trilogy comprises The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, Beauty’s Punishment and Beauty’s Release, first published individually in 1983, 1984 and 1985 in the United States. They are erotic BDSM novels set in a medieval fantasy world, loosely based on the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty. The novels describe explicit sexual adventures of the female protagonist Beauty and the male characters Alexi, Tristan and Laurent, featuring both maledom and femdom scenarios amid vivid imageries of bisexuality, ephebophilia and pony play. The trilogy was a bestseller, outearning the author’s commercially successful first novel Interview with the Vampire. I read them in the 80’s…… OH MY!
I was going to say the same thing! I read the Sleeping Beauty series when I was in college. It was if I remember correctly) pretty well written. Probably easier on the brain than the Shades of Grey stuff. ;-)
Going to google WTF ephebophila means… Probably should clarify that I am guessing right at maledom and femdom while I am there. And Holy crap that was the hardest sentence to type with autocorrect on!
Bah. I guess I’m the only one who isn’t really liking it. Love the sex scenes. Hate the writing and editing. But Ana is too… Stoooopid and too whiny. And grey is just a controlling abusive jerk.
Who is apparently very attractive.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m still reading it, but I’m disappointed that so far (and I’m in book two) thre has been really very little actual bdsm, and lots on non-consensual control games.
But maybe 20 years as a Dominatrix led me to expect something else.
No, I didn’t care for it either. Putting aside the bad writing, I couldn’t get past the fact that Grey was introduced to BDSM by his mother’s friend, called Mrs. Robinson in the book. If the characters were reversed, and Ana was taught BDSM as a mid-teen girl by her father’s 40-something friend, reaction would be very different.
You aren’t alone. I didnt like it, either. Couldn’t put it down, but didn’t like it. I didn’t read the next two. And I’ve been amazed that such a shitty book can get sooooo much attention! This is actually the first place I’ve seen it written about in which everyone freely admits how poorly written it is. Everywhere else, it’s nothing but, “OMG!!!!! Best book ever!” Ugh. The Twilight series is fine literature compared to this crap! (I had a love/hate relationship with that too.)
For an avid reader, I thought it was pretty stupid. It was repeditive, and dragged on. I’m not going to keep hating; the sex parts were cool. I mean come on how often do you “literally trip” into a handsome billionares office, whom falls madly in love with you and whine hes too smothering, and being the virgin that she is, well was she cant handle it because she is in love. 5 days is way too long to be broken up and sigh they are back together on a crazy adventure, and engaged 2 days later. It seems like so much happens and you would think its longer than what it really was. I guess time flies when youre having “50 shades of fucked up sex.
Wheres my husband? It changed my life. Not. I’ve always enjoyed a twitchy palm on my ass. Nothing new there.
I commend you for actually reading the entire thing. I could tell about an hour in where it was going and the plot was so annoying to me that I had to stop reading. It is very much like a written version of a porn. The plot and dialogue suck so you might as well just fast forward to the naughty bits.
Honestly, I would love if this was an audio book, to take all the work out of reading for me.
The writing was HORRIBLE. The whole thing eventually bored me – I have no desire to even attempt either of the other two books – but good luck!
I’m telling you, Brittany, put Winter Jasmine on the list. You’ve read it, you know that it has a decent, woman powered story line and the sex in it is hot, is properly worded and doesn’t make you feel like you need a shower after.
Other than that, I think I actually pictured you blushing on the plane reading that. Tee hee. Was it anything like Lady Chatterley’s Lover?
Doesn’t reading books like that make you horny? Being the one in our relationship who has the high sex drive, I don’t think my DH would be thrilled with me reading porn books, he’d probably just do his impression of a woman, roll his eyes and complain he has a headache. I kid you not.
I read this story when it was Twilight Fan Fiction. I loved it for the sole purpose of it being Edward & Bella getting it on porn style. Never have I read lady porn or BDSM books before but I kind of love it now.
This is petty but, why the hell did the author set her book in the Pacific NW (where I live) when she is soooooo bloody British and the book reads so British and so NOT Seattle or even American? “As I shall be conferring the degrees that this year’s graduation ceremonies.” Um yeah. Right. We all talk just exactly like that.
Also I only got through the first book of the Sleeping Beauty trilogy and it made me want some mental floss to get those images out of my head. I need more for the tampon thing now.
I believe it’s set in the Pacific NW because it was originally Twilight fanfiction and that is where that book is set. So all she did, really, is change the character names and had the book published.
Yep… which also explains the problems with the writing style and lack of editing.
Yay! Porn that I can READ for a change? I’ll take it!
Read it when it was “TwiFanFic” and entitled “Master of the Universe.” It was hot but there’s much better TwiSmut out there!! Two of my fave FanFic authors are historians and the overall structure and development of the existing characters is so much better. I left you a recommended list on FB earlier in the week. Did you see it? The ones that I recommended had such incredibly deeper “E&B” and they were STEAMY HOT and very well done.
Shout out if you’re interested in me re-posting…..
Yes repost please!!!!!! Thank you!
link to the re-posting?
I loved your review but I hated the book. I am glad to see I am not the only person who did, though. Whew.
Anyway, I agree, some hot hot sex now and then, but she annoyed me so much I would not consider picking up book two or three, at all.
I love that you read next to that guy, though. HA!
My (main) problem with these books is they STARTED as Twilight fanfiction called Master of the Universe. And the author openly admitted, once she got some fans and attention that she was just using the fandom as her beta testing. It makes me sad that someone like her is getting this kind of attention when there are other BETTER writers who are working their asses off.
For some great vampire ladyporn, hit the 1-click on JR Ward’s Back Dagger Brotherhood. Hubs sees me reading one of those and he knows he is getting some! her Fallen Angels series is really great too. Both series have strong women, hot guys and even hotter erotica.
Oh oh oh!! That guy in the airport was my materials science professor, Max Lagally. He is one awesome dude. He studies really thin sheets of silicon and was on my PhD defense committee. Also, I was late for class one day and when I got there, he had started taking bets about whether I’d show up or not.
HAAAAAAAA! Awesome.
Whoa. AAAANNNDDD you’re famous.
Max Lagally sounds like a porn character’s name.
SURE ENOUGH!! —> http://photos.uc.wisc.edu/photos/6294/view
I just finished with this book. Everything in it is frustrating. From the first sentence to the last. I can’t believe a 21-year-old can be this bratty yet she doesn’t even have a cellphone nor an email address? The tampon thing is… way off. I hate talking about menses in relation to sex. Ugh.