Since this is a three-in-one review, it’s a little longer than usual, but since I know numerous if you’re as curious about these books as I was, I figured no one would mind!
Flash plot Readers of the Twilight series will see numerous parallels in the plot and characters of these novels books like 50 shades of grey was first written as an addict fiction for Meyer’s series. Still, though James nearly shadows certain Twilight aspects, the trio eventually tells its tale of forbidden love between a deeply defective youthful man and a self-conscious youthful woman forced to come into her own to save her love and lover.
As a reader, like numerous women, I picked up the first book out of curiosity. I wanted to see if Fifty Shades was worth the hype. Unlike some soccer moms out there, I had read romance/ erotica books ahead, so I was not waiting to be shocked or disturbed by the sex scenes. Overall, I wasn’t. In her Black Dagger Brotherhood series, J.R. Ward had explored the BDSM angle times ago. So what it came down to was whether the characters and plot could pull me along with or without the sex scenes (rather with). Though the bad writing was abstracting, especially in the beginning, the answer was yes.
Like in the Twilight series, I loved watching Ana Steele’s heroine grow from scary to tenacious. These books allow women to memorize about our first loves and cringe over our struggles to grow from shy teens to confident, youthful women. I inversely loved watching Christian Grey, Ana’s love interest, a decline from rich, tyrannous sex- god, to a broken but mending, sweet mortal being. The original fantasy of chancing a rich, handsome, and dangerous nut is delightful, but realizing that utmost of the time, it is nothing further than fantasy is comforting and more realistic.
As a writer, I am unsure whether books like these should make me feel more or worse about my writing. I felt great reading the opening chapter of the first book and feting that it was in some serious need of modification. It’s comforting to know other new pens struggle to get their stories out of the gate. However, as one reads further into the book, it’s clear that James was still chancing the voices of her characters in those opening chapters. Though the first-person history felt stiff and the dialogue sounded forced for those first many chapters, James got into a groove fairly snappily. Soon, Ana sounded like a real twenty-two-year-old, both in her studies and dialogue. Her inner monologues frequently chimed sorely and humorously true of a twenty-two time old in the throes of love and life.
Nethermost line if you are an adult who liked the Twilight series and are comfortable with some untraditional sex scenes, you are likely to get smelled of this series, so go ahead and buy the entire trio. You will save some cash, and trust me; you will not want to stop reading long enough to drive to the nearest store.
I have always been a greedy reader and loved participating in my opinions on the books I have read. Still, since completing my first two novels, I’ve got a lesser appreciation for writers’ craft and, maybe due to my struggles with the revision process, have also grown a bit more critical of what I read. My book reviews give me a chance to share what I loved (or despised) as a reader and what I learned as a writer from the published authors whose books I am reading.