Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Fifty Shades of WOW! by E. L. James

Ladies!  My heart is racing!  I feel breathless and naughty and barely before I finished the last sentence of the first installment, “50 Shades of Grey by E. L. James I was on B&N ordering the next two!
What a crazy dark, funny and erotic ride I have been on for the last 24 hours!  The romance between Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele wraps every John Wayne and Maureen O’hara Movie, Mickey Rourke in 9 1/2 weeks, Shanna by Kathleen Woodiwiss and James Spade in the Secretary into an amazing, crazy dysfunctional, un-put-downable  story I have read in a really, really long time.
This is a dirty book, graphic, dark and incredibly sexual and sensual.  This is also a book about love.  I know that sounds crazy but there it is.  Love is never simple.  I don’t care how nice a ribbon Nora Roberts or Johanna Lindsay put on it. 
“50 Shades of Grey” starts off very cliché.  He’s a mysterious, sexy multi-millionaire and she is a young innocent virgin, untried and completely inexperienced.  Hints are dropped everywhere this is going to be a  bondage and submission story.  She says “Yes Sir” and he is “very controlling and possessive.”  I have read these before including Anne Rice’s “Beauty Series.”  I was thinking I have done this and there will probably be a lot of overdone sex scenes that I will be skipping over.  I was really wrong. I have read other novels in this genre and none of them have the depth of relationship “50 Shades” has. The sex is graphic and necessary and the star but it isn’t the only player on the stage.  Once we get past the initial facades we discover two people who are very lonely and screwed up.  From the story it is obvious that Christian came out of dire circumstances as a very young child and even though his adoptive family try to love the damage away it is never really enough to overcome hunger, abuse and pain.  Ana, though has her own demons and they are actually more subtle and dare I say even possibly worse than Christian’s because she doesn’t recognize her baggage.  She loves her mother but she was just as abandoned by hers as Christian was by his.  She feels very small and unlovable and she complicates an already complicated situation by constantly questioning her value.  Don’t we all?  How do these two people who have come from such disparate backgrounds find a way to make their dysfunction work together?  That is what this story is really about.  Ok and it’s about the sex too.
Again, I cannot reiterate enough this is adult material. This is a very graphic story.  It is pornographic.  This is NOT for kids or even teens!  This is what X is all about.  I am not sure if I should be even reading it.  Yes, I am going to read the next two installments, “50 Shades Darker” and “50 Shades Freed.”  I am not innocent.