Fifty Shades of Grey book 1 - book discontinued by Vintage Books - review by ScarlettRed

I'm not one to jump on band wagons. Frankly, I tried avoiding this book for as long as possible but there was a curiosity that I had in regards to it. I mean, I heard people at work talking about it, friends talking about it, even the radio talked about it! I couldn't avoid my desire to understand what this book was about. There, I said it. I wanted to understand what this "mommy porn" book was about, what an erotic novel is like, and how one would go about writing sex scenes in a novel. This was perfect, it's everywhere and everyone was reading it.

This book.. I mean "book" is far from what I thought it would be. Frankly, I haven't finished it yet. I'm going to try to keep going and come back to this review when I'm done but I don't know if I can. Frustration levels just kept building from page one all the way along until the first sex scene at almost page 100.

Part of the problem is the writer's ability to actually write. She is trying very hard, you can tell. Some words seem out of place and as if she just used a thesaurus to change it to something that sounded more sophisticated. The main frustration was the repetitiveness. She was trying to ingrain in your mind what this Anastasia Steele was like. What she thought about herself and those around her, but she beat you with a dead horse. Not only was the horse dead, but it was decaying. The writer had no regard that the character archetypes she was creating were extreme and infuriating. This girl has no confidence, self-conscious, and she constantly stumbles about. Yet this girl has guys asking her out left and right? She thinks she's ugly but everyone around her is saying how they want her? This makes no sense. Christian Grey is not the first man to show interest in her, but yet the author sets her up as if she has never had someone want her badly.

Apart from blatant disregard for the multiple ways Anastasia's character is being portrayed, the author fares no better with Christian Grey. She describes a cold and dark individual, something akin to empty. No emotions. Yet he has emotions, but you barely see them. He gets angry easily when he's not listened to, he hides his happiness, his desire, his intrigue. She constantly states how he appears to be hiding his smile or his feelings about something. Enough, really. I get it, he's a cold, calculating, emotionally unavailable, eccentric billionaire who suddenly and equivocally finds himself with every fiber desiring and needing to control this quirky, clueless, super low confidence and self imaged girl because.. well, I don't know yet, if there ever is an explanation. My assumption is because he's a broken excuse for an emotional love interest. The author tries very hard to set her up as an innocent girl who doesn't know better, with no mental filter for her words, someone that seems much younger and too immature to be 21.

Don't get me started on the first sex scene. ***SPOILER**** you've been warned. Although this is only as far as the first 100 pages or so.

She loses her virginity to the man. He gets angry she's a virgin, she asks why and BAM he's not mad, but wants to take her virginity. She's barely kissed a boy, this is how innocent the author makes her, yet she gets banged hard her first time. Also, he asks her to show him how she masturbates. An innocent girl like that? Of course she has never done that, even if she had, he should know he has to earn trust to get her to do that for him, which is going to take more than two dates. But. She. Has. Never. Masturbated. Ever. I'm sick of those one word sentence sentences too!

Oh and did I mention that she bleeds, everywhere? Yeah, yet she orgasms (vaginally and clitorally) her first time, doesn't feel any bit of pain losing her virginity, and is quite verbal. It just seems highly unlikely her first time would be like that. Oh and I can't forget. When she questions him about the contract, the BDSM, etc, she is very juvenile. Asking things like, "Do you get hurt?", "have you hurt anyone?", like she's a five year old about to get molested. And when he says he's been with 14 girls, she's not jealous, she doesn't deal with any emotions (like a girl head over heels, wants him badly, getting jealous of her room mate kissing his brother) she just thinks it's not as much as she thought and says okay. Uh? What? She immature in all the wrong places!

Terrible. I don't want to keep saying it, but it has to be said. I know nothing of the BDSM lifestyle but the characters seem far from what I would assume the life to be like. I could rant about this but I don't have enough space to write all the terrible points this book has. Again, I'm only 100 pages in. I can't imagine how I'll feel when I'm done. I'll want to smash my E-Reader!