Unless you’ve been living under a rock for these last few months, you’ve probably heard of the romantic trilogy, Fifty Shades of Grey, that has claimed it’s spot atop the NY Times Bestseller’s List.
Now, I wrote a review for this trilogy a couple of weeks ago but I felt that it was lacking and I ended up realizing that it was because I thought the book was lacking. As an aspiring author, I give so much credit to anyone with enough perseverance and creativity to put out a book, let alone a bestselling trilogy!
There were good things and bad things about the trilogy. Things that irritated the hell out of me and things that I quite enjoyed. So here goes,
PROS
- It wasn’t something I wasn’t used to reading and even though it is classified as ‘erotica’ it wasn’t the typical “old lady porn” as my family likes to call it.
- The author used a lot of great vocabulary. I read the trilogy on my iPad so when I came across new words it was easy to define and mark them for future reference. As a writer I love learning new words. It excites me greatly.
- The story really drew me in and I fell in love with Christian Grey, just like the thousands of other women across the nation. Swoon.
- The story evoked so many emotions and really brought the reader into Christian’s disturbed dominating world.
CONS
- Repetition. Repetition. Repetition. So many of the same words and phrases were used time and time and time again. Anastasia said the same things so so so many times. Annoyed yet? And I’ve only been repeating myself 3 times. The book does it, literally, over 100 times for many of the phrases. Shoot me. The author clearly had an extensive vocabulary so I’m not sure why she chose to constantly repeat the same damn thing.
- The romantic scenes were repetitive and they happened SO MUCH. I get it -they like having sex, but c’mon it was so unnecessary. It got to the point where I would just kind of skim over them, making sure not to miss anything pertinent to the plot.
- They were also totally unbelievable. I won’t speak to graphically about it but geez James could’ve tried a little harder to make the romantic scenes more realistic. It actually got pretty annoying half way through.
- I don’t want to spoil it for anyone so I’ll remain vague but I really didn’t like the major event that happened near the end of the final book. The way that the author had Christian react to certain news felt so over-the-top and weird. After getting to know Christian throughout the first two books I wouldn’t have expected him to react the way he did. It felt… wrong.
Overall, it was a good trilogy and I would recommend it to anyone looking for some angst, drama, romance, and heated moments. I also recently read Bared to You by Sylvia Day and I HIGHLY recommend that if you enjoyed Fifty Shades of Grey. It is strikingly similar but better written and much more believable, if you ask me.
I heard that there is a movie in the works… this is really shaping up to be the next HUGE book/movie craze. I can’t deny the fact that I’m excited about that. I really see Ryan Gosling as a perfect Christian Grey… just me hoping out loud. As long as Kristin Stewart isn’t anywhere near the cast of the movie then I will be a happy camper.:)
Have any of you guys read the trilogy? What are your thoughts? It’s okay; don’t be shy… at this point I feel like more people have read it than have-not.