Well I finally finished them. They nearly bored me to death and I wasn’t sure to finish them. I kept picking them up and putting them down. I still think the same thing about these two as I thought about Fifty Shades of Grey. Wow is the writing to be desired! I’m sure her vocabulary isn’t as limited as she makes it look in this series. I can’t believe whoever edited it didn’t notice or didn’t even bother to try to propose new words, expressions, and scene changes. As far as character development is concerned, there isn’t any. The characters still remain one-dimensional. Christian is an arrogant, insufferable, controlling, sex-crazed, ego maniac all the way until about page 460 in Fifty Shades Freed. This is a spoiler free review so I’m not telling why but I’m sure you can figure it out. Fifty Shades Freed is 579 pages and to be frank it’s 250 pages too long. The series does get a little better overall concerning the story. Something other than sex does happen. Unfortunately, there is too little of it. I did like the way EL James ended the story by having us read accounts from Christian’s point of view such as an earlier scene in Fifty Shades of Grey when he meets Anastasia in the hardware store where she works. I can see why critics and journalists are calling this “Mommy porn”. It’s seems to be clear that middle-aged women all over the UK and the US are the ones who have found this series to be nothing more than a charming, sexy love story. I would say there is more sex than story. I wonder if Christian would have been described as an attractive thirty-something minimum wage mechanic that had a penchant for BDSM if all those women would have still found the book to be a sexy love story. Somehow, I think not. I keep hoping that the majority of women are smart enough not to get sucked into a relationship with a controlling, attractive, billionaire dominant because he’s rich and good-looking. It’s said that women desire a man who can take care of them and that knows what they want. This is not a story for feminists, nor for impressionable young teenage girls. I feel women should be able to choose what kind of sex they want to have and not have it forced on them in a manipulative way. I just wanted to slaughter Anastasia’s inner goddess and got sick of hearing how hot Christian was and the both of them not believing the other was in love.
Anastasia is made out to be unbelievably naive and has no idea what she wants. Of course, she needs Christian to tell her what to eat, what to wear, what job she’s going to do, etc. In Fifty Shades of Grey, she doesn’t have an email address, doesn’t know what a Macbook Pro is, and has never shaved herself. It’s only in the last two hundred pages of Fifty Shades Freed where she miraculously becomes intelligent, knows how to fire a gun, and saves the day. Things are wrapped up in a neat package at the end of this series. You’re going to think it’s a fairy tale. It’s done much too perfectly. It’s not possible that someone with the difficult background of Christian Grey won’t need some lifetime therapy to succeed in his family life. He’ll need more than a pretty, young, fresh girlfriend, who will do everything he wants.
As for EL James, she got lucky on this one, staggeringly lucky. How many expert erotica authors are out there trying to get their first real break? I haven’t got a clue but they are all wringing their hands trying to figure out how someone can get published for a poorly written trilogy full of boring, repetitive sex, marketed as BDSM and get famous for it; so famous that she’s sold more copies of her books than the Harry Potter series. We’re all reeling from this conundrum. I’m sure it won’t happen for her again. In another year we’ll have three movie adaptations to look forward to and more occasions for EL James to make even more money off the Fifty Shades series again. Click the link below and you’ll get a good idea about the frenzy of the Fifty Shades series, who is head over for it and how EL James absolutely doesn’t understand at all the frenzy around it. The You Tube clip is a funny video of the comedian Gilbert Gottfried reading an excerpt from Fifty Shades of Grey. Enjoy! It’s pretty funny. Happy holidays and Happy reading!
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Easy reading is damn hard writing.
—-Nathaniel HAWTHORNE
