Fifty Shades of Don't Waste Your Money: Fifty Shades of Grey

I feel like literally everyone has been talking about E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey. And when I say everyone, I mean everyone—even my grandmother mentioned it to me (yeah…scary). Anyway, not one to back down from a book labeled “controversial” I decided to pick it up at B&N and let you guys know whether it was worth it for you to do the same.

It's not. And actually, it’s not even because it’s all about sex. Well, I guess it kind of is, but not for the reason you might suspect. I wasn’t offended by the sex in this book. What I was offended by was the fact that it’s just a romance novel! I mean here everyone’s talking about it like it’s some big deal—it’s on the NY Times Bestseller list and everything—and it’s just a smutty erotic novel. And it’s sixteen stinkin’ bucks! I hate to break it to all you ladies who think this is some kind of new controversial subject, but you could have gotten basically the same thing (with a slightly less classy cover) for under $5. I mean, I understand the urge to read something a little risqué sometimes (even I like a good romance novel now and then), but this book is definitely a rip-off.

And now I will tell you in great detail why it’s a rip-off:

1.       The writing is unimpressive. The raw desire and passion for writing is there but it feels as though James hasn’t spent enough time in the company of other (much better) writers. To clarify, her writing reminds me a little of my writing before I went to college--the basic ability to write, and write fairly well, is there but she hasn’t had her work extensively critiqued. It’s completely unchecked—the kind of writing that comes right out of your head but needs a lot of fine tuning to be really worth reading.

2.       These are the same boring characters you’ll find in any other romance novel. All you ladies swooning over the beautiful but twisted Christian Grey—he’s not the first, and he won’t be the last inhumanly handsome rogue with a dark past and a soft side he only lets one woman (conveniently the main character) see. And Anastasia is, again, the same old female romance novel heroine—naïve, breathless, shy, with a few brave, cheeky qualities and a ridiculous, unfounded sense of insecurity. She thinks she’s ugly but really she’s beautiful, she’s oblivious to all the gorgeous other men who have a thing for her, and she falls for Christian after barely even a conversation (someone stop me before I puke). The few conversations they do have are completely underwhelming—usually just a bunch of sexual innuendo with hardly any substance at all. Certainly nothing to fall in love over.

3.       The side characters are really no more interesting. Kate fills the stereotypical best friend role, hardly appearing as a character of her own. Anastasia’s parents are also completely generic (though someone should tell James that having such a scatterbrained mother who bounces from man to man would probably stir up some resentment in any daughter).

4.       Unfortunately for James, she also hit on a pet peeve of mine by throwing completely random big words into the mix—as Anastasia says to Grey at one point “someone was playing with the thesaurus”. I mean maybe those words are really part of Jame’s vocab, but she needs to pick a side in the book. Most of it is completely mundane, repetitive, everyday language and then all of a sudden there are these random words you need a dictionary for. Nothing wrong with trying to bring it up a notch, but to be effective she needed to follow through with more writing of the same caliber—one or two words here and there isn’t going to cut it, and frankly it was just irritating.

5.       And how is it that this girl has nothing more to think about besides Christian Grey. In the whole story, her overriding concern is this guy, meanwhile she has some pretty huge changes going on in her life. She’s supposedly graduating from college, but rarely do we hear about her concerns with what she’ll do afterward and the uncertainty of where her future’s headed. And I can tell you right now, from recent experience, that graduating causes a lot more anxiety than she’s demonstrating. She’d be way more worried about finding a job in this economy with an English major, trust me (and don’t even get me started on how pissed I was that after hardly any searching, and only two interviews she got a job—and don’t try to tell me it’s because of her GPA, which she keeps bringing up, ‘cause I had a 3.9 and 6 months later I still don’t have a real job).

6.       Last but not least, this book is unfair to both male and female characters. I thought I’d end up hating Christian by the end of the book for his control-freak-ness. And I did. But I was actually angrier with Anastasia’s character. She doesn’t want this man to force her to be the way he wants her to be, but the whole entire time she’s trying to change him. Not only does this make her a hypocrite, but it also perpetuates the detrimental idea that when someone is in love with you they’ll change for you. Ladies and Gents, let me tell you something: most of the time, if a guy or a girl has certain personality flaws, they’re probably never going to go away. And it doesn’t mean they don’t love you if they won’t (or more likely can’t) change that for you. I mean certain things are unacceptable—like abuse. But what I disliked more than the abuse in this book was the reinforcement of that idea that people should always change for one another—an idea, which I feel, is the cause of most unhappiness in relationships. If you want to try to change for the better for someone, that’s great, but it shouldn’t just be expected. You have to learn to love and accept someone for who they are, and if you can’t without them making some huge personality change then you should move on and find someone more compatible. If you’re always waiting for your partner to change his ways and turn into prince charming some day, you’re going to be met with a lot of unhappiness

So, I’m sorry for going off on a long tangent and for being a bit harsh, but this book isn’t even worthy of the box—you just shouldn’t buy it in the first place. And, if you’re curious and you want to read it anyway, make sure you get it on sale—don’t waste $16 like I did.