Fifty Shades Darker: Book Two - erotic novel by Entrenue - review by misskat

This second installment in the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy picks up just where the first one ended. Christian Grey, the controlling, handsome, disturbed multimillionaire and Anastasia Steele, the boring, mousy, submissive recent college graduate, have ended their relationship. The author, EL James, leads readers to believe this breakup is a bad thing, when in fact, it's probably a pretty good thing, since Grey is controlling, possessive, and abusive. The book starts with Steele beginning work at a publishing house and staying at her own apartment for the first time since she has moved to Seattle.

The first line of Chapter One reads, "I have survived Day Three Post-Christian..." This line disgusts me right off the bat. Yes, we have all felt that horrible feeling following a breakup, but the wording just infuriates me. A couple of pages later, "And so a pattern develops: wake, work, cry, sleep. Well, try to sleep." What a weak female character. It briefly covers her first couple of days at work (emphasis on briefly) before Grey reappears in her life, sending her flowers and emailing her before offering to take her to Portland to attend a friend's function because she has no car. And then it begins again. They were broken up for five days total and he picks her up from work to go to Portland and everything is better again. Despite the fact that he dragged her away from her best friend's art show after only 30 minutes. He makes out with her outside and snarls (EL James word, not mine) "You. Are. Mine." at Ana. Charming! And everything is back to normal again. This was all in Chapter One.

In Chapter Two, he freaks out because she didn't use the safe word when he was whipping her and blames everything on her and says he can't trust her. Moments later, they decide to have a vanilla relationship and start adding kinky things back in as she is ready. She goes to a bar with coworkers as a way of celebrating her first week of work and Grey swoops in and makes her leave. He tells her that her boss "wants in her panties" and then reveals that he has bought her company. She is furious for about two seconds then gets over it. They go to her apartment for the first time ever and cook dinner together, and of course, have lots of sex! Grey proves to be correct when Steele's boss tries to make advancements toward her. Conveniently, her boyfriend owns the company, so he is fired immediately.

A mysterious woman stalks Steele, who turns out to be one of Grey's former lovers. She breaks into Steele's apartment and threatens her but Grey saves the day, then proposes to Steele. She says she has to think about it.

Grey then goes missing because someone has tampered with his helicopter and the engines failed. When he returns home safely, Steele freaks out and agrees to marry him. The next day is his birthday and she meets his first lover, the lady who was his Dom, and more freaking out ensues.

After the party, he takes her down to the boathouse and it is full of flowers. He gets down on one knee and proposes, with a ring and everything. Meanwhile, her former boss is watching them and plotting (it is he who tampered with the helicopter). This is how the book ends.

The plot of this book is painfully simple. Even the more interesting sections (stalker, helicopter crash, etc) are poorly developed and uninteresting. In between these events is just a lot of sex. The relationship is moving out of the Dom/sub situation (which is fine, because it was horribly inaccurate and abusive anyway) into just a lame relationship. It still seems abusive and Grey seems controlling, and Steele is still the weak little child she was before.

As I said in my original Fifty Shades review, this is Twilight fan fiction. I have not read or seen any of the Twilight books or movies so I am not sure how similar they are.

EL James still has not said vagina. She is still using her One. Word. Sentences. For. Emphasis.

Steele's "inner goddess" or "subconscious" is still present unfortunately. Luckily, not as frequently as in the first book.

The characters suck just as bad as in the first book. Grey is so easy to hate because he is so controlling but at the same time, you just want to scream at Steele for being so weak. She is a terrible female lead character.

This series was a letdown. I have no idea what the hype was about to begin with. The main characters are a weak, submissive mouse of a girl and an overpowering, dominating and bossy man she takes as her (first) lover. There is nothing about these books that are anywhere close to reality, not the scenarios, not the characters, not even the sex. I would recommend everyone avoid these books.