Wow

Fifty Shades Grey Book Trilogy

This is not Great Expectations. It's not a brilliant book but it's damn fun. I had every intention of sneering at the story because it's such a pop phenomena. I had just finished a serious book and wanted something light and silly and I had DLd this a while back out of curiosity.

I thought FSOG was going to be BDSM lite wrapped around a silly romance with lots of inaccurate and misguided sadomasochistic sex.

Not so. I am finding it a sweet little love story. And the kink is well done too. Yes, Ana can be quite annoying with internal dialogues with alter egos and goddesses and much pursing and posturing and biting of lips. She is prone to gushing and huffing and puffing - but so is he, Christian. He is constantly devouring her with his smoldering liquid gazes, so the field is pretty level.

He pushes her. She pushes back. etc etc.

What this book is about is two youngsters falling in love. And I liked it.

In the real world lately there's a lot of seriously screwy fantasy floating around, passing itself off as a sexy way to "have a relationship".

Power imbalance is not a healthy basis for any sort of relationship but in this crazy world, it's become a very serious and desirable sexual fantasy.

However, in real BDSM relationships, there has to be MUCH talk and honesty and give and take where BOTH negotiate what they want - it might be "about" dominance and submission, but submissives and dominants negotiate everything. Nobody orders anyone around who hasn't consented to being "ordered around". That's the way it is.

What I like so much is this story is about two rather nice people naively exploring who they are, what they want and how each of them can love the other, doing it the way young people will - with lots of blind faith and enviable energy. Except kink is means they use to find each other - not the end.

Yes, they're pretty, he's rich, she's a young adult who starts out a virgin (probably one of about ten in the free world) who is instantly capable of multiple climaxes at the bat of an eye. He has a perpetual erection for her.

In the midst of all this perfection, he buys her expensive gifts and first class plane tickets and they drink the nicest wines, eat well, he has a fabu apartment and she gets an Audi, etc etc. VERY fluffy - perfect couple with perfect skin in a fantasy scenario in the midst of a complicated love negotiation.

To my eyes what makes this very interesting is that it's about the two of them playing with and giving up power to one another while being quite aware they're doing it, both of them are again and again taken by surprise by their emotions and what they're willing to give to one another because they're falling in love, the ante is upped constantly and there are a lot of emotional risks for each. And in those kinds of details lies the interest as good romances will do.

Christian is not "THE GREAT DOMINANT" (heaven save us from those leather wearing heavyweights) and she's not Anne Rice's "Beauty" (ditto on that as well), blithely falling, willynilly into all kinds of heavy duty SM scenarios without any adverse emotional residue or physical trauma to invade the endless kinky little fantasy.

Every step of Ana's and Christian's negotiating and posturing is considered by the author who apparently knows a lot more about kink than many have given her credit for. And in that I found it convincing in some ways and a good read. The sex is definitely a bit hard core without being pornographic, at least to me - descriptive but never creepy.

I like this book. It's a fast read. It's sort of a double spaced big typeface novella so there's not a whole lot to it. GREAT BEACH READING - which can be devoured by one's own smoldering eyes in an afternoon.

Content wise though, it's far more potent than you might think. He ISN'T all powerful and she isn't a victim.

In the end he's a guy (who pushes in very interesting and challenging ways) and she's a girl (who's smart enough to push back just as hard if not harder).

I think I'll like the sequels.

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