Discussing Fifty Shades of Grey by EL James [CC Book Club]

By Alex K.

Hello and welcome back ladies! I hope you enjoyed our pick this month, the book blowing up all over the world, “Fifty Shades of Grey” by EL James. It’s being touted as “mommy porn” and has made it okay to read a sexy, yet cheesy, romance novel during your morning commute. Check out my thoughts below, but be warned, there are some spoilers!

Fifty Shades is your typical girl-meets-boy story where the girl is totally and completely smitten with the boy. Anastasia Steele is a meek, soon-to-be college grad who is forced into interviewing super-rich, playboy CEO Christian Grey. Anastasia stumbles into his office and through a series of events, ends up entering into a relationship with him. Pretty normal right? Well this is where it gets…different. Christian Grey is a dominant, meaning that he doesn’t snag himself a girlfriend – he gets a submissive. Anastasia is a virgin when they meet and she is obviously cautious of this potential relationship with Christian, but she feels so drawn to him that she can’t just cut ties.

The book is chock-full of erotic scenes, including some that border on the dominant-submissive lifestyle, which have turned it into a scandalous read. After some trials and tribulations, including the woman who taught Christian Grey everything he knows about BDSM and Christian’s sad childhood Ana decides that she can’t handle Christian’s lifestyle and leaves him near the end of book 1 of the trilogy.

Any of this sound similar to Twilight? Maybe not the sexy stuff, but the underlying storyline of girl-enthralled-by-boy? That’s because the book found its beginnings as Twilight fanfiction. I have to be honest, that tainted my opinion of the book a little bit, as I find Bella Swan to be one of the most annoying characters in all of literature (if you can call it that). This was also a problem I had with “Fifty Shades”; Ana isn’t really a strong character and bends a lot to other people, Grey included. She seems so weak and not at all the strong, independent woman I like to see in fiction. I also found the sex scenes to be a little gratuitous. That’s not to say that I had a problem reading that stuff at all, but it got a bit boring. Honestly, it got to the point where it was like “Oh, just another sex scene” and I skimmed through it until I reached more of the story. I believe James realized that the sexiness of the book would be her hook and packed as much of it into the novel as possible. Some of it seemed natural, but those two get it on an awful lot!

Overall, I found “Fifty Shades of Grey” by EL James totally entertaining and a good book for lounging by the pool. Sure, it’s not a great work of fiction, nor a classic, but it will keep you occupied on a commute or long plane ride. If you’re skittish about sex, then you probably won’t enjoy the book, as about 1/3 of it involves Ana and Christian doing the nasty or talking about his BDSM tendencies.

Did you read “Fifty Shades of Grey” with us? We want to hear your thoughts! And, don’t forget to recommend us a book for June.