Review: Fifty Shades of Grey

Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



I’m going to skip including the premise of this book…and actually I am going to write this review for the whole “Shades” series.

I was reading the Huffington Post Books section and ran across a story about this series and it piqued my curiousity. Here is a “nutshell” version of what the article said…This series is inspired by Stephanie Meyers’s “Twilight”. It was originally on a site Twilight Fan Fiction and it was referenced as “Mommy Porn”, which, frankly, got my attention.

In an effort to see what all the hub bub was about…I downloaded them. I started the first book, “50 Shades of Grey” on Wednesday afternoon and had finished the whole 3 book series by midnight on Thursday.

As this was Twlight fan fiction I thought it was going to involve vampires…I was WRONG. Rather than vampirism as the central theme it was BDSM – for those of you unfamiliar with the term that is Bondage, Disciple, Sadism, Masochism. Yep, as in “whips and chains”. Now I am not a prude, by any means, but it’s the first time I’d encountered this particular theme in a book I was reading, and I was surprised, to say the least. It’s the BDSM that is drawing all the media attention! But the story was so much more than just BDSM.

Here is where my “review” starts…This was a story of redemption. The male protagonist, Cristian, spent his formative years in an UGLY atmosphere and it was with the introduction of submission that became his coping mechanism during those highly hormonal teenage years. After he learned that “control” he switched over to the “Dominant” role…and that dominance is what allowed him to continue coping…but at a huge cost. His level of self-loathing is astounding…he often said he was “50 shades of fu**ed up”.

Enter our female protagonist, Ana…it’s through it’s through her reticense to participate in his lifestyle, that causes him to re-examine and re-evaluate his life.

Was this the best written book I’ve ever read…NO! Was it an incredibly fun read…YES! Did it make me want to run out and sign up to be someone’s submissive…NO! Did it give me ideas of new areas I might want to try out with my husband…YES! Will I read it again…OH YES!




View all my reviews