Fifty Shades of BLAH

The third installment in the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy was one of the most terrible novels (as far as plot goes) that I have ever read in my life. I mean literally, it was painful to get through almost every page. I only forced myself through it because I had already read the first two and for some unknown reason I came to slightly care what happens to the characters. I just happened to be invested by that point.

Okay so I GUESS I should mention that the following contains spoilers about what happens in the third book of the Fifty Shades trilogy, but honestly, there is not much to give away. If you have a slight amount of common sense you can infer what happens after reading the first page of the first book. But, whatever, if you really want to hold on to the minimal suspense accompanying not knowing what happens in the third book, stop reading now.

The series went from a steamy novel about an innocent 21-year-old driven mad by the sexy charms of an older man interested in BDSM to a story about a rich married couple with nothing but a bunch of white people problems to desperately attempt to inject conflict into the story. Where should we buy our third mansion? Should we have three spoiled kids or just two? Is a Mercedes fancy enough or do we need to go with a Lamborghini?

Those days are gone...

I was annoyed with the protagonist, Ana, from page one of book one, but in book three she becomes somehow more unbearable still. For example, she goes on and on about how she never eats and thus is super thin, and how Christian (sexy man) gets mad at her for never eating. Is this really the kind of character with whom girls should be sympathizing? I think not. There are enough young women with eating disorders at this point. She also complains whenever Christian gives her an expensive present, but then instantly gets over it. Like, in one scene he buys her a brand new R8, whatever the hell that is, I am not a car person, and she gets all pouty about it for a grand total of about one second and then

shrugs her shoulders and decides she may as well get used to being richer than Bill Gates.

This raises another question: how exactly did Christian come in possession of such vast amounts of capitol? He is not a trust fund baby exactly, and he is vaguely described in the beginning of the series as a CEO of a company. Could the author be any more vague? Christian Grey is supposed to be 27 and filthy rich. Not buying it. I guess I shouldn't have expected much in the way of plot for an erotic novel series. I admit I didn't know was to expect.

So basically, Ana started out as a somewhat strong and independent female character and morphs into a woman who get married to the first guy she dates and then becomes filthy rich and does whatever he says. Okay, being dominated in the bedroom is one thing, but having him tell her what to do elsewhere is not cool if she is allegedly a strong female lead. Perhaps one of the most irritating moments was when she wanted to keep her maiden name at work and is “determined” to do so no matter what Christian says and then instantly caves when he asks her to change it. Real strong, Ana, real strong.

There is also a point where her father is in the hospital, and she still goes back to have sex with Christian right after visiting him. That is messed up on so many levels. I mean, come on, they do the nasty basically every time they lay eyes on each other, I’m pretty sure one night off is not going to do anyone any harm. On that same note, the libidos of both characters are just unbelievable. Like, once you have been with someone for a certain amount of time, I don't care how sexy he or she is, your desire levels inevitably dip at least a little bit.

Perhaps my issue was just having far too high of expectations for an erotic novel. That is just simply not how I get my kicks. I prefer a little bit of a plot. I mean no offense whatsoever to the author of the trilogy, even though I just spent a good deal of time bashing her novel. Props to her for creating a worldwide phenomenon. She is probably so stinking rich at this point that any form of criticism, especially from a little nobody teacher in Japan, doesn't even slightly bother her. I hope that is the case, and that she doesn't send out assassins to “take care of me” on her behalf.