Fifty Shades of Grey

Title : Fifty Shades of Grey (Fifty Shades #1)

Writer : E. L. James

Number of Page : 514

Publisher : Vintage

When literature student Anastasia Steele goes to interview young entrepreneur Christian Grey, she encounters a man who is beautiful, brilliant, and intimidating. The unworldly, innocent Ana is startled to realize she wants this man and, despite his enigmatic reserve, finds she is desperate to get close to him. Unable to resist Ana’s quiet beauty, wit, and independent spirit, Grey admits he wants her, too—but on his own terms.

Shocked yet thrilled by Grey’s singular erotic tastes, Ana hesitates. For all the trappings of success—his multinational businesses, his vast wealth, his loving family—Grey is a man tormented by demons and consumed by the need to control. When the couple embarks on a daring, passionately physical affair, Ana discovers Christian Grey’s secrets and explores her own dark desires.

Erotic, amusing, and deeply moving, the Fifty Shades Trilogy is a tale that will obsess you, possess you, and stay with you forever.

In my opinion:

Since this book was originally made as a fan fiction of Twilight, I would compare a little bit about those two in this review. Although I think they are both different.

It was not surprising that I liked Fifty Shades more than Twilight. It was more real (vampire was just a myth) and the characters were more likable. Edward the perfect boring vampire vs Christian the complex and tortured billionaire. Bella was selfish, plain, boring, and weak. Ana, on the other hand, was quite strong, brave, responsible, and witty. And the most important: Ana cared about her father, her mother, and her friends. Bella? She left her father to be with Edward. She didn't even like her friends, nor care about them. =.= However, the repetitive and juvenile words in Ana's naratives made her look dumb and immature.

So, the major problem with this novel was the language. I always thought that English was such a beautiful language that all English books would be comfortable for my eyes to read. But, Fifty Shades was horrible. Very horrible. Too many repetitive words: Oh, my ; Oh, no ; Holy fuck ; Holy shit ; hot ; grey eyes ; mutter ; murmur ; crap... Please, stop it!!!!! I love Ana in the dialogs, but I hate her in the narratives. Since the story was told in the first POV, I really suffered reading this thick novel. 514 pages, for God's sake! The description was no better.

I would probably gave this book four stars out of five, if I ignore the stupid language. I really like damaged and broken characters. I was intrigued with Christian Grey. Honestly, at the beginning I felt like reading horror books. Christian was so creepy. Every words he said were so polite and polished, like he had used them many times to fool many women. He was a crazy control freak, controlling all aspects of Ana's life even in eating. He was always angry when Ana ate so little. Obsessive, possessive, intense, dominant, and sick! And when he showed Ana the Red Room of Pain; full with chains, whips, kinky toys, canes... I was shocked. How eerie was that? I didn't know how Ana could handle it with such a calm attitude. If it was me, I would have fainted.

At first, Ana was attracted to Christian because of his looks. It was normal, I meant who didn't like a handsome guy? It was the same as an admiration to beautiful arts. Furthermore, Ana still had common sense and told herself to forget Christian. But, the problem was Christian. He was a stalker and he showed up many times in front of Ana, gave her expensive gifts... Some more, Ana didn't have any relationship experiences before. She was so naive, she was easily fooled by Christian charms. Yes, we should blame Christian. He had ruined a young and respectably raised girl.

There was something weird about this novel. Ana had two sides in her brain. Subconscious and inner goddess. Subconscious was the kind and angelic side whereas inner goddess was the devilish and sexual-addict side which liked Christian very much. Both sides were depicted as Ana herself with strange expressions, for example: her inner goddess could do somersault and dance if it was happy, her subconscious would glare fiercely at her if it was angry. I hadn't found a single novel told in first POV which used this trick. Something new and quite unique. 

Continue...

Christian introduced Ana to the world of BDSM. He asked Ana to sign the relationship contract. Well, Ana should be angry with this. The contract was an insult. However, Ana had already loved Christian when she knew about his abnormal habits. Blinded with love, she agreed to try although she didn't sign the contract. (*rolling eyes) She wanted to change him, understand his terrible past, and heal his wounded soul. Also, although she knew that Christian was not a heart-and-flowers-type of guy, she asked him to try to be that guy. And he did try.

I enjoyed the emails shared between them. They were funny and Christian was seemed normal here. I really loved the childish and carefree sides of him. I also liked that Ana didn't always say "yes" to anything that Christian wanted. She challenged him all the time, made Christian frustrated. No wonder Christian slowly respected her and treated her like equal (except in the Red Room of Pain, of course).

I could not comment about the BDSM part. The only BDSM novel that I read was The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty by A. N. Roquelaure and I didn't like it. The BDSM pictured in Fifty Shades was not that cruel and I still considered it as normal. 

At the end, Ana left Christian because she couldn't accept the real sadistic part of him. I felt kinda sad for her. She wished too much for Christian, she loved him truly, but Christian was too fucked-up to endure. It was a very good decision, though. Hard, yes. Breaking her heart, yes. Yet, she should leave for her own sanity so that she wouldn't follow the dark path of Christian.

Nice story and complicated characters.

3/5