I’m sure there are thousands of 50 Shades of Grey reviews but I am about to add another. Oh, and, this is totally my opinion. I’m not hating on the book, I just know a lot of people have extremely different opinions and I wanted to just say what I thought of it. Here we go.
A few months ago, I was looking for the next interesting book for me to read. Having heard A LOT of buzz about this book, and its consecutive weeks on The New York Times Bestseller List I decided to give it a try. I had never read “erotic” fiction before, but I thought it would be entertaining. Even if the book was terrible at least I could giggle at the sex scenes.
As I started reading, I found the book to be quite predictable. Maybe it’s because everyone had talked about the gist of the novel, and I already basically knew the plot line, but I still found it redundant.
Anastasia Steele is a woman who is just about to graduate from college, meets Christian Grey who is a billionare business man. He’s cold and distant, but super sexy. They meet and then she starts running into him in the most coincidental places. He takes her out and then they form a connection. He seems dark, and twisted. A mystery. She is basically described as a Bella Swan type girl from Twilight. She isn’t confident, but a lot of boys go for her. She’s unaware of her beauty, I guess.
Fast forward some meetings and dinners, then he finally brings her to his place and she finds out about his twisted world. I don’t want to give anything away for someone who wants to read the novel, but as the story goes on Anastasia finds herself falling for the mystery that is Christan Grey. She wants more than just steamy sex. He feels a connection to her he’s never felt with anyone else but struggles to overcome his emotional issues…DUN DUN DUNNNN.
I felt the plot was a little unrealistic and predictable, but it says it’s fantasy so that’s not surprising. A lot of people say, “How can you read a book just mainly about S&M type sex? I don’t want to read about some sleazy guy chaining a poor, innocent girl up.”
If that’s how you feel: DON’T READ THIS BOOK.
As far as the depth of the plot: it’s like a pool that goes to 5 ft. deep. You can still stand comfortably and see above water, but you sort of wish it would go deeper. There isn’t much story line - it’s sort of repetitive and obvious, but it’s good for being “erotic” I understand there’s only so much you can write about a guy who loves S&M sex, but I felt a little disappointed. Maybe my expectations were too high. It’s like a published fan fiction, in my opinion.
There is a lot of sex scenes, and they are full of imagery. I found it to be like reading a porn, but not a disgusting one. It wasn’t like, “he jizzed on my face” But it did in-depth describe the penetration. He did do quite a bit of S&M sex. The most disturbing part to me, *SPOILER ALERT* is when he removes her tampon to have sex. That, to me, was too far. But, once again, that’s what you get when reading this type of book.
However, I believe people are making too big a deal of the book. SHOCKER, people have sex. An even bigger SHOCKER, people like to be tied up and whipped. Just listen to a Rihanna song, it’s the same thing.
All in all, I am glad I read the book to see what all the hype was about. It wasn’t terrible, it was very entertaining and I, honestly, couldn’t put it down. However, I felt that I looked more forward to the S&M scenes and not that actual plot, I got bored with the story. After I finished it, I wasn’t super compelled to buy the next one. I want to finish the series, but I feel like I could probably guess what will happen.
I recommend it to anyone who wants to read about some steamy S&M sex, but if you’re not into any of that, then just don’t read it. It’s not a big deal.
On a side note, I do hope they make it into a movie and use Ian Somerhalder as Christian Grey. The sexiness would be too much.
