#65: New Authors: Fifty Shades of Grey

Yeah I read it. All three of them actually.  I'd never read anything by E.L. James before and I'm not sure I ever will again.  Her writing style is pretty good, she's great at sucking you into a book where you hate the characters but just HAVE to find out what's going to happen with them.

What's frightening to me is just how unrealistically dangerous her characters are. She has admitted that she knew nothing about BDSM, and it's pretty obvious. Not only is her Dom an unstable, out of control, unsafe Dom, but her virginal and inexperienced heroine is immediately having mind blowing orgasms from his incredible technique. Oh, and he's a billionaire who's fallen head over heels in love with her, so much so that he's able to move past years of trauma just from her presence. Yeah right. Talk about setting real people up for major failure. There are definitely guys out there who can be unstable, out of control and unsafe control freaks, but any virgin who's going into sex expecting mind blowing orgasms right from the getgo is going to be seriously disappointed.  And no girl is going to be able to "heal" a man like that.

It's terrifying to me how many young women think that it's super romantic for characters like Edward and Christian Grey to exhibit stalker behavior.  And Mr. Grey takes it to some technological extremes.

This book is great fantasy. It's a fun read. But don't take it seriously. Christian Grey is a terrible Dom. He has absolutely no self control and he exhibits abusive tendencies. Which, to give her credit, Ana does fight against. And to give him credit, he's in therapy. So there are some good things there.

But please... don't think that the majority of this book is in any possible in real life. You're just setting yourself up for massive disappointment and a life of loneliness because you will never measure up to Ana and no man is as sweetly and innocently emotionally abusive and determined to change as Christian Grey.