Thursday 14 June 2012

50 Shades of Grey

There is a new craze sweeping the libraries and Waterstones all over the world and its name is 50 Shades of Grey.  Dubbed ‘housewife porn’, this is probably one of the most ridiculous books I have ever read, yet I found myself throwing tourists out the way as I rushed to Tesco at lunch time to buy the second book in the trilogy, 50 Shades Darker (please note I went to Tesco to buy this book as it is £4 whereas everywhere else wanted at least £8 and I point blank refuse to pay that much for this load of crap – plus I wanted some Watermelon slices).

So, I can sense you all wondering why I went to buy the second and third books if the first one was so abysmal?  Well, I only have one explanation for this.  This book is so rubbish, SO RUBBISH that it’s actually brilliant.  I have tried many ways to describe this book, but the nearest I can get is the following recipe:

Recipe for 50 Shades of Grey

1.     Take 1x Twilight
2.     Remove all trace of Vampires
3.     Add 18,000 more buckets of teenage angst and thinly disguise as ‘innocence’
4.     Mix up and if still too full bodied, remove any trace of decent storyline.
5.     Once blended add a packet of filth, 5 tablespoons of smut and some derogation for good measure.
6.     Leave in bag until a suitable time, aka until no one can read it over your shoulder on the train – once removed, read quickly while still cool. 

I have read the first book and must say I was disappointed to see people had compared this to Twilight.  I KNOW most of you reading this will have either hated Twilight OR never seen it/read it, but I love Twilight.  The story is well thought out and well written if you can ignore all the contradictions and general twatishness of the female lead.  I do admittedly want to punch Bella in the head with something heavy and blunt, but my love for Edward Cullen trumps all so I can forgive the Twilight stories for a lot.  This book is NOTHING like Twilight.  The only similarity I can see is that there is a bloke that is clearly winning in life and he falls in love with a girl that is way below average.  She spends the rest of the book knowing this and feeling totes awkward about the fact the guy likes her, and everyone reading the book has NO IDEA why he likes her either as she is a top pleb.

50 Shades of Grey starts with some melt called Ana being roped into interviewing the immensely successful, rich, beautiful and bossy Christian Grey for a magazine interview arranged by her friend.  She literally falls face first into his office and makes Christian want her, but he doesn’t want her like a normal person would want her.  He genuinely just wants to beat the absolutely pervy shit out of her in his ‘red room of pain’ and makes her agree to be his submissive and sign a contract, even though she is a virgin and has a shit fit at the thought of even touching his arm (which subsequently, she is not allowed to do because Christian is all WEIRD and DARK and has UNDERLYING ISSUES).  Enter lots of graphic sex scenes that left me feeling genuinely embarrassed reading it on the train and lots of talk of her ‘inner goddess’ having an absolute melt down every time she sees Grey and you suddenly come to the end of the book.

I walked away from this story wondering why I had bothered, but then everyone just kept banging on about it and I found myself wondering what happened in the next books.  Surely the author had to up her game for the prequels, so what was she going to write in them?  At the risk of sounding like a total perv, I was kind of interested & bought them – so sue me.

Expect me to read these and then be even more annoyed that I wasted a total of £10 on all 3 books (beat that Waterstones you total fucking rip off!).

P.S My mum saw the first book on my floor and asked what it was about and I had to lie and say I hadn’t read it yet – cringe!

Have you lot read any of them yet?  If so what do you think?  If you say you prefer it to Twilight then you probably just need to sign some sort of register.

1 comment:

  1. I have read reviews and a few excerpts - but it really doesn't interest me at all. It sounds like a well dodgy version of 'Secretary' (same storyline, even has the same surname of the guy!!). But 'Secretary' was awesome. Incredibly sensual, kinky, and a love story without being Mills and Boon chintzy.

    '50 Shades' sounds watered down, and a bit, well, bland. I have friends who fit the housewifey mentality, who enjoyed this book (maybe they are the type who giggle in Anne Summers too...).

    Maybe I've been exposed to too much erotica in my lifetime to even get some sort of kick out of 50 Shades?! Oh well...!

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