TAC Reviews...50 Shades of Grey

Date Posted: 14/02/15

Book first published in 2011 and is currently in the process of being turned into a film, starring Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan which promises to bring all the "erotic" sex scenes of this novel to the big screen.

Oh what tedium we must endure as we march inevitably towards death.

You may be wondering why I have started this review by mentioning death, and the reason is that books like Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey are slowly but surely hammering the nails into the coffin of good story writing until only a literary world populated by their drivel remains.

Right then, without further ado let’s take a look at 50 Shades of Grey. Now on the back of the Twilight bandwagon authors have been thinking to themselves “how do I get myself a piece of that action?” and in the case of 50 Shades of Grey the author has simply decided: why not just copy Twilight? So now that impressionable 15 year olds have been ruined by the Twilight films it is everyone else that the author has set their sights upon.

Here's the plot....It is Twilight with a rich guy instead of a vampire, want to know more about the storyline? Then go ahead and read my review of Twilight. Now Twilight at least seemed to be building towards something, at the time the characters were engaging enough to make me keep reading, it was the atrocious ending that really made me cast Twilight aside in disgust. 50 Shades of Tedium was only able to keep me reading until about the 70odd page mark, and the reason is this, it is just woeful. I can honestly say that there is not one single thing that the book has going for it. The style of writing is terrible and the language reads like the ramblings of a two-year old. Everything is written from the perspective of it happening at the time, very few books are written like this and the reason is because it is a horribly unnatural way of writing. There is no sense of flow or urgency just “I did this...” or “I did that...” or “I got bored and started cutting myself” sorry, the last one is what I felt like doing whilst reading this tripe.

Let's have a look at the characters. Whatever-his-first-name-is-Grey is a god amongst men, and of course he falls for our Bella-clone despite the fact that he is a rich handsome, millionaire or billionaire, whichever it is, and could have any woman he desires. Yeah, because that happens in reality, doesn't it? We don't live in Disneyland boys and girls, we live in reality where the handsome rich guy marries a gorgeous playboy model not the plane-Jane that crosses his path.

Now, the sex. The sex scenes in it are graphically described and utterly pointless, don't get me wrong I have no problem with a sex scene in a book or film as long as it is relevant. To name but a couple, the sex scene between Sarah Conner and Kyle Reese in the film The Terminator is completely relevant to the plot, and the sex scenes in the book  Altered Carbon are also 100% justified as they is necessary to the situation the characters are in at the time. In 50 Shades of Boredom they serve no purpose other than to provide cheap and tacky titillation for the reader and if that is all you are after then go watch porn and be honest with yourself.

This is the worst kind of tripe because it has spawned so many copies, all authors have to do is write about characters having sex and thet will sell books in bundles. Is this really what our society has descended into?? That our lives are so boring with so many people having tedious and boring sex with their husbands, wives, boyfriends or girlfriends that they need books like this to give them so kind of sexual thrill??? If so then I truly weep for humanity and all those people who are turning to books like this to reawaken their sexual desire.

Admittedly I only got 70ish pages in before I threw the book on the fire because that was all I could tolerate, people have said the book gets better later on but then so does syphilis but you wouldn't want to subject yourself to it.

Not surprisingly I give this crap a solid Thumbs Down - it is a poorly written story that is simply not worth anyone's time

1/10 – It is abysmal and a giant waste of ink and paper