Fifty Shades Trilogy (Fifty Shades, #1-3) by E.L. James
Published by Vintage Books on January 1st 1970
Pages: 1625
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Book Depository | Google Play | Create Space | Lulu | Kobo | Smashwords
Goodreads

Now available as a three-volume paperback boxed set, E L James’s New York Times #1 bestselling trilogy has been hailed by Entertainment Weekly as being "in a class by itself." Beginning with the GoodReads Choice Award Romance Finalist Fifty Shades of Grey, the Fifty Shades Trilogy will obsess you, possess you, and stay with you forever.

This bundle includes the following novels:

FIFTY SHADES OF GREY: When college student Anastasia Steele goes to interview young entrepreneur Christian Grey, she encounters a man who is beautiful, brilliant, and intimidating. The unworldly Ana realizes she wants this man, and Grey admits he wants her, too - but on his own terms. When the couple embarks on a daring, passionately physical affair, Ana discovers Christian's secrets and explores her own desires.

FIFTY SHADES DARKER: Daunted by Christian's dark secrets and singular tastes, Ana has broken off their relationship to start a new career. But desire for Christian still dominates her every waking thought. They rekindle their searing sensual affair, and while Christian wrestles with his inner demons, Ana is forced to make the most important decision of her life.

FIFTY SHADES FREED: Now, Ana and Christian have it all - love, passion, intimacy, wealth, and a world of possibilities for their future. But Ana knows that loving her Fifty Shades will not be easy, and that being together will pose challenges that neither of them would anticipate. Just when it seems that their strength together will eclipse any obstacle, misfortune, malice, and fate conspire to turn Ana's deepest fears into reality.

This book is intended for mature audiences.

• I think we’re off to an interesting enough start…though, I have to note that Fifty Shades jumps right into the romantic aspect of this book very quickly. It was like…”Book starts…introduce main character–LOVE INTEREST. HERE HE IS!!!” That was weird to me. *shrugs*
• If this hoe says “down there” one more time, I’m scheduling a city wide bonfire for everyone who is annoyed to burn their copies of these books together! How is this erotic anything when the filth is censored?
• Now that I’m at the 400-page mark, the writing seems to have somewhat improved and flows better. Of course, it could be that my brain has just altered to accept what I’m reading.
• I literally feel like I’m reading the movie, which I saw before I started this book.
• If this hoe says, “oh my,” one more fucking time! That’s just as annoying as using “down there” instead of saying cunt, pussy, or hole. Something damn!
• These people have a lot of fucking sex. This is coming from someone who also has a high sex drive. So I find it important to point out that it seems like they have long foreplay, and then he gives her that bop bop wop bop for 5 minutes and then everyone has an orgasm and it’s over. ????

I got to the end of the first book, and I realized that given the vibe of this writing, it is kind of like you are just seeing their relationship progressed step by step. In other books, you basically just get all meat, so anything that’s not totally relevant to the plot seems to not be there. Or, it’s just more obvious that it is directly on plot..? It’s hard to describe, but as I have seen the second movie, I was able to recognize a couple of red herrings that were thrown in subtly that do end up being important later. I think one of the things about Fifty Shades of Grey is that you really fall into the day today thought process of a girl falling in love. You get the confusion, the excitement, and the fear, which is probably tripled given Anastasia’s aversion to pain.

It’s hard to not find them at least a little bit obnoxious. Some of their inside jokes are repeated far too often for my liking, but as the end of the book rolls around and they break up, some tears sprung from my eyes. I found their situation to be very relatable. What I mean by that is that it is very difficult to go through a break up with someone you obviously care about when the only reason you feel like you shouldn’t be together it’s because of incompatibility. That is a lot to wrap your head around for anyone who has been in that situation, and though some of the writing is stomach-turning, I think the gist of how complex relationships can be gets across.

---

Fifty Shades Darker

Well, here we are in the second book and 5 days later (in the storyline, not in my life). I will have to admit that I was a lot more sad about The Break-Up then Anastasia’s coping afterwards though I did feel very sad that she is not able to eat while she’s this upset. Which is something I can also relate to. Christian is back and is annoying, overbearing, and controlling as usual, Kate is still on her Everlasting vacation, and Jose still seems to not be over his feelings for Ana. #typical ??

• Okay…I’m definitely reading the 20th sex scene of this novel, the one when they do the bop bop on the pool table. All I can think is that Taylor is sitting in the security room with his feet kicked up on the counter, watching them on the screen. ?? I mean… he’s just being a good security guard, right? *cackles*

  

Another thing…Christian and his annoying as hell insistence that Ana eat all her food. Have these folks never heard of leftovers?? And why does a billionaire need subs who cook anyway?? Like…why? I know if I was making that kind of money, I’d probably store wine in my cupboards just so I wouldn’t have to go to the cellar to get it. Ridiculous. And…he’s tripping. She should’ve got that fancy sports car in the canary yellow. Surely, that would’ve glowed like a hazard cone at night!

But let’s talk about…What’s her face?? Leila. I can’t help but think that that girl also came from an abusive background which is why she’s having a mental break now. For a while, she probably was very happy being Christian’s submissive. Given how…rough…he is. It might have reminded her of home. That might also explain why her family isn’t trying to help look for her. These are just some musings…

• Mrs. Robinson is annoying as hell. Like, this bitch keeps showing up unannounced, can’t mind her own damn business, always in their relationship, and then gets mad when Christian tells her fuck off. THEN DOES THE SHIT THRICE MORE. I’D BE MAD AS HELL TOO.
• These folks have known each other for like 5 days and they’re already getting married. Why why why!

---

50 Shades Freed

Andddd… 3rd novel. I may be 10 pages in and we are getting another dry ass sex scene.

I have never seen someone be so upset about hickeys before. I guess because she’s young and Christian is her first and only, she clearly has never had to cover any before. I’ll be damned if I let some hickeys keep me from laying on a beach half naked in France!

• It turns out that Leila does have parents. Not sure that they did the best job of raising her though…

What was surprising was how the author humanized Leila.  when we are introduced to her, she is just a broken, mentally ill, underfed, depressed girl hanging on to someone who does not want her. In this story she reappears after having gotten the help she needed, and adds more depth to Christian’s character  by sharing a bit of what it was like to be his sub. I found that part kind of sad, especially when Anastasia tries to step in  to interrupt his ill treatment of her.  and that moment, I actually halfway likeed Anastasia.

Finally, finally, finally got to the end of this story! By the time I got to this third book, this was really starting to drag. The sex is still dry as hell, there are 75 sex scenes,  and it’s like reading the same sex scene except they change location sometimes.

This story could have been much improved with a very thorough editing.  I know it supposed to be erotic romance, but many of these sex scenes add absolutely nothing to the story,  last entirely too long, and are not interesting to read. In about half of those things, the author us over the head with the word “salacious”. I don’t think I’ve ever felt such hostility towards a single word in my life before. I did not get any reprieve in other parts of the story, because there were way too many phrases that were repeated to the point of being annoying, including “oh my”, “oh Ana”, and  how they annoyingly call each other Mr. Grey and Mrs. Grey.

I do have to admit that there are a few good points and this book that made me very emotional. These include the same where Anastasia is trying to rescue Mia from Jack and why is the Christian telling him that she’s leaving him, and when we get Christian the submissive. Submissive Christian might have appeared in the second book for like 5 Seconds, I’m not going back to check though. The point is that far it actually hurt my soul a little bit.

Now,  to continue complaining…Anastasia and Christian both have been annoying, childish, overbearing, and just fucking irritating on almost every page of this book. There were several dark moments where I thought I was not going to make it to the end. But the lord gave me strength to make it through, and I did.

Another thing that kind of bothered me was how Anastasia’s father got into an accident. I was really under the impression that it was going to turn out to be that Jack was trying to kill him, which ended up not being the case. It would have fit into the book and gave it some more juice because I get Navy Midway through the book that it was going to turn out that Jack and Christian were in foster care together, so that did not come as a surprise when that information was finally revealed to the readers.

And why when I got to the end of this book finally, was there a whole new section that started from the beginning of the story he’s in Christian’s point of view. I rolled my eyes so very hard, read about one paragraph, and then scammed through the rest of it to make sure it was what I thought it was,  then shut the book because I definitely am not reading that shit.