sabbygee's reviews
456 reviews

Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James

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1.0

More reviews at sabthebookeater.blogspot.com

I'll just say this straight on - I regret getting on the bandwagon. It was like I was blinded by the idea of a Christian Grey that I failed to see, at first, how incredibly ridiculous this book is. Now I'll be dissing the book in the form of a review (trust me I'll do my best to be constructive), so if you're a fan well... hello there.

*Awkward silence*

Okay let's get down to business.

Reasons why I read the book in the first place:
1. I was curious - my friends were raving about some Christian Grey.
2. I got on the bandwagon and fell asleep so I missed my stop and failed to get off on time (which then led me to reading the other two books but I'll discuss that in a separate post)

But thankfully after some time I came to a realization that it's merely a hype and that a lot of people are blinded, sadly.

Enough of that. Here's the "constructive" part of my review (I will try. Promise.):

Reasons why I didn't like the book

1. Plot

Simply put, the plot lacked substance. Honestly if you take out all the erotica in it you could easily see how incredibly shallow the story is. Well... even if you don't, it's still shallow. You just have to get over how "hot" Christian Grey is to see how mindless it is. I feel like it only gained popularity because of how vulgar the sex scenes were. Sex sells, spot on.

2. Characters

There wasn't much variety in the characters. At some point I felt like everyone was all too perky and perfect (especially Christian's family) that it seemed like Kate, Anna's bestfriend, was the only believable character. More importantly, Christian's deep rooted psychological problem could have potentially contributed to his dynamic personality but in the end I just felt scared of him. A lot of the characters lacked grounding, I think.

3. Writing

One of my biggest issues with this book is the incredibly sloppy writing. I can't help but feel like the publisher was so in a hurry to ride the hype that it was enjoying in the world of fan fiction that they allowed the writing to suffer. A lot of big words were repeatedly used and sometimes it seemed out of place. Descriptions were lacking in important narrations and were in excess in a lot of unimportant narrations. I've never felt so annoyed at how scattered an author's writing could be. Ever.


4. Fan Fiction

Initially I had no idea it used to be a fan fiction of Twilight. A lot of the similarities in the book gave me the feeling it resembled Twilight and I was only able to confirm it when I did a bit of research via Google. When I found out though, it explained a lot - and I mean plenty. Now I know there's nothing new under the sun but to read something that greatly resembles another popular series? Turn off.

That's about it. So much for immersing myself in all sorts of genre. Pleh