50 Shades of Grotesque

I thought I’d do my first review over a best seller that is sweeping the nation – possibly nations.  Brace yourselves for something terrible.  I give to you my review of Fifty Shades of Grey.

The best description of this book that I’ve ever heard remains “It’s like reading a really bad blog.”  (Thank you, Bethany Cecil.  When I couldn’t find the words she could.)  

Now, I will do my best to explain why I find this hugely popular book to be a travesty of the greatest proportion.  Of all the love stories out there – even those of the soft core porn variety – you chose this horrifically written monstrosity as the book to become enamored with, society?  My disappointment in mankind is immeasurable.  There are so many phenomenal books out there and authors who deserve your support and admiration.  I apologize, but E.L. James is not one of these authors.  

Sex is sexy.  I get it.  Men have Playboys and women have raunchy romance novels.   I like something a little spicy in my life, too.  However, if I’m going to spend hours reading pages upon pages of the written word there needs to be a story.  There needs to be a plot, character development and - if the work has been published - I would prefer it didn’t have blatant grammatical errors.  Trust me – you can get your soft core fix and a beautifully written story if you look hard enough.

I’m not going to lie to you – I only read to page 187.   I tried so very hard to finish this book but when I read the words: 

“For the first time in my life, I voluntarily go for a run. I find my nasty, never-used sneakers, some sweatpants, and a T-shirt,” (p. 187) 

I decided I’d reached my tipping point.  Those are likely in the running for the two most horribly written and useless sentences in the history of mankind.  Also, why are your shoes nasty if you've never used them?  There is a bigger problem with your life than signing over your freedom to a mentally unstable man and being referred to as 'the submissive' for the foreseeable future - if your shoes are disgusting and you've never worn them.

Everyone kept telling me to just keep reading and I would really start to care about the characters and their love story.  How long am I supposed to wait to care about the characters??  If I don’t care about anyone – at all – in the book by chapter twelve wouldn’t you say there is a PROBLEM??  I should have done a little more research before committing to reading this book because if I had learned before starting that this book was inspired by Twilight I would have known it to be the huge disappointment that it is before opening to the first page.  I blame myself, really.

Sorry – onto the actual reviewing part of this book.

The first thing that bothered me was, well, the entire first chapter.  So many commas haphazardly thrown about . . . and why does curly hair always have to be unmanageable in novels?  I know lots of people with very manageable curls.  That’s more of a personal thing, though and not a blatantly terrible thing for an author to write.  What is blatantly terrible is calling the best friend’s Mercedes “the Merc”.  Also, the conversations between EVERYONE are unbelievable, unimportant and therefore unreadable.  Once you get past the first chapter and you learn more about Mr. Grey and Miss Steele the more horrifying the writing gets.  I can’t think of a single more disgusting or immature way to refer to a woman’s vagina than as her “sex”.  

The further into the book you get the more you realize that the only thing this book is kind of good for is the sex.  Well, it's good for the sex if you know nothing about sex.  The characters are unlikeable.  The relationships between characters are absurd and would never survive in reality.  The worst character of all is the main character – much like the main character in Twilight.  My issues with Miss Steele are as follows: 

       1.  She has an extreme lack of self-confidence 
        2.  She has had apparently ZERO sex education even though she’s in her twenties (do not misunderstand me – I have nothing against virginal women but I do have something against ignorant women who become entangled in sadistic sexual relationships)
     3.  She forgives her male best friend for sexually assaulting her
     4.  She agrees to sign a contract that allows a man to basically own her AND beat her 
     5.    In just the 187 pages I read it was blatantly obvious that this was a girl who would just completely fall apart at the seams should this man who has shown her ONLY lust and NOT love leave her.  Outside of sadistic sex with Mr. Grey this is a girl who has nothing going for her.  This shows an obvious lack of self-worth and is another instance in popular (terrible, but popular) literature where a woman is portrayed as someone who absolutely cannot function without a man.  What were these feminists working toward all these years?  What decade is this?  Only in the 21^st century can women take roughly 3,000 steps backward in maturity and self awareness and still think that they’ve matured and moved forward because there is sadistic sex involved.  I guess it doesn’t matter if women are seen as useless, unintelligent, childlike and submissive in every way as long as they are getting laid but good.   

      I recently read a magazine article that suggested there is something wrong with society when people are OK with a book about teenagers killing each other but have issues with a book about sex.  I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather be the badass lady from Hunger Games who fights for what’s right in a dystopian post-apocalyptic world than a submissive twat who signs a contract that allows a single man to beat the shit out of her for his own pleasure because she can’t imagine a life without him.  Oh and just so we’re clear – I’d also like to point out the stark difference between a made-up dangerous world that promotes behaviors that people obviously don’t expect to emulate in their real life and the dangerous real world that is portrayed in 50 Shades that encourages young women to be tortured for a good lay and believe there's nothing wrong with it.  

OH!  I almost forgot – why, Miss Steele, are you consistently wearing your hair in pigtails?  Why are we reinforcing the idea that it is OK to be attracted to a woman because she looks like a little girl, E.L.?  I find this to be creepy in a kid-toucher mustache type of way.  And what woman wants the man she’s with to be attracted to the six year old version of herself? 

I can’t believe there are three of these books . . . 

Since I stopped at page 187, I will allow this website continue to sum up the horridness of this book for me:  http://50shadesofsuck.tumblr.com/