21 April 2012

50 Shades, discussed

So I finished the first book of 50 Shades of Grey last night.

SPOILERS










My very first, and obvious impression, was all the sex. At first it was like, "Ok, he's a freak." I didn't realize that it would be the foundation of the story. Now, I like a nice sex scene. However, eventually I started to wonder if I'd just paid 10 bucks for erotica I could find in a cheap romance novel. Honestly, there was so much sex that I started skimming the sex scenes. Yeah, I know. It got repetitive. Here's the routine: She has an earth-shattering orgasm from some various form of foreplay, then he fucks her, but she can't touch him, and he screams out her name as they climax together.

Besides the constant sex scenes, it had enough of a story line to keep me reading. I thought the ending SUCKED. The book introduces all these questions about Mr. Grey, but doesn't fully explain everything. The explanations for the things that are revealed are incredibly drawn-out. Props to the author for making sure I buy the second book.

A few annoyances. The word "Beguile" was used too frequently. It's a fairly unique word, so when it was used, I noticed. Thanks to my fancy Kindle, I know that it was used 8 times in the book. Bust out the thesaurus and find another word, Author.

Towards the end, the "I like him and he likes me, but we can't figure out how to talk about it without having kinky sex instead" theme was wearing on my nerves. Make some progress already.

I did enjoy the emails. I cracked up several times. They were clever, and believable. I could totally relate to that aspect, where electronic flirting is the norm. I remember when Chris and I were first starting to get to know each other. We didn't email, but we flirted on AIM a lot. Oh, AIM. Good times.

I also chuckled at her "inner goddess." We all have that inner voice, and I thought that was a nice way to describe the insight of this particular young, naive girl.

Actually, this story reminded me of Chris a lot. Not the kinky BDSM sex, billionaire control freak aspect. For the record.

I enjoyed the theme of young, all-consuming love- where you don't want to spend a minute apart from each other. Nowadays, I'd be suffocated in that situation, but I remember how that feels. The author did a really great job with that.

Overall, it was an entertaining read. It was an easy read. I hope a lot of the unanswered questions get answered in the second book. I never thought I'd say this, but I hope they lay off some of the sex in the second book, or at least mix up the pattern a little bit.

2 comments:

  1. I was going to ask you for a review, so thanks for posting. Did you know this book was originally a twiligt fanfic? I read me a lot of xfiles/Mulder/scully fanfic in my youth, so any fanfic holds a special place in my heart. I think its awesome/hilarious this ended up getting so big. I read the movie rights sold for some absurd amount.

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  2. Huh, I had no idea! Cool! Btw, the second book is much better so far. I have to say, I'd watch the movie.

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