A Writer’s Review of the Fifty Shades of Gray Trilogy by EL James

Since this is a three-in-one review, it’s a bit longer than usual, but since I know many of you are just as curious about these books as I am, I figured no one would care!

flash plot: readers of the TwilightThe series will see many similarities in the plot and characters of these novels as fifty shadeswas originally written as fan fiction for Meyer’s series. However, although James closely follows certain Twilight respects, the trilogy finally tells its own story of forbidden love between a deeply flawed young man and a shy young woman forced to pull herself together to save her love and her lover.

That’s the story in a nutshell. In fact. Okay, so the ‘forbidden’ part stems not from Christian being a brilliant, deer-eating vampire, but from a palm-moving Dom with a love of BDSM and, unlike Bella, Ana doesn’t care. faced with the decision to give. her humanity, but rather embrace her sexuality in all her perverted splendor. Other than that though, it’s your typical Romeo and Juliet story.

As a reader: Like many women, I picked up the first book out of curiosity. wanted to see if fifty shadesit was really worth the hype. Unlike some soccer moms, I had read romance/erotica books before, so I didn’t expect the sex scenes to surprise or upset me. In general, it was not. JR Ward had explored the BDSM angle years ago in his Black Dagger BrotherhoodSerie. So it came down to whether the characters and plot could appeal to me with or without the sex scenes (preferably with). Although the faulty writing, especially at first, was distracting, the answer was yes. as in the Twilightseries, I loved watching the heroine, Ana Steele, go from timid to tenacious. These books allow women to remember our first loves and be ashamed of our struggles to go from shy teenagers to confident young women. I equally loved watching Christian Grey, Ana’s love interest, go from being a rich and domineering sex god to a broken but lovable and healing human being. The initial fantasy of finding a rich, handsome, and dangerous lover is fun, but the realization that most of the time it’s just a fantasy is comforting and more realistic.

As someone who enjoyed the Twilight series, I was a little disappointed at first by the number of similarities between the main characters and the plots. However, as he read more in the books, James began to dawdle more and more with fan fiction until he finally created his own story, a bit clichéd, but funny in its own right. Some of my favorite parts of the books were when James was having fun with his own humor and creativity, mainly the subject lines of the emails sent between Ana and Christian, which were always funny and surprising.

So while the sex was great, in the end it was the characters with miles of heartbreaking history and those bits of creativity and humor that got me and kept me up at all hours of the night.

As a writer: I’m not sure if books like these should make me feel better or worse about my own writing. I felt great reading the opening chapter of the first book and realizing that it was in need of a serious overhaul. It’s comforting to know that other new writers have a hard time getting their stories out there. It’s clear as one reads further into the book that James was still finding the voices of his characters in those opening chapters. Although the first-person narration felt stiff and the dialogue sounded forced during those first few chapters, James got used to it relatively quickly. Soon, Ana sounded like a down-to-earth twenty-two year old, both in her thoughts and in her speech. Her internal monologues are often sadly and humorously classified as those of a twenty-two year old in the trio of love and life.

There were also other flaws, such as overused words and phrases, which began to stand out as the series progressed. The development of the plot was also unstable, but this I understood as a writer. James was trying to balance the plot surrounding the personal journeys of his characters with external plots. If the two plots aren’t closely tied to each other, like James’s, one can climax at an odd time within the book’s arc.

So why would all these flaws make me feel worse as a writer? Well, because my own books share a lot of them, but they’re not likely to go viral like fifty shadesanytime.

Bottom line: If you are an adult who liked the Twilight series and you’re comfortable with some non-traditional sex scenes, chances are you’ll get sucked into this series, so go ahead and buy the entire trilogy. You’ll save some money, and trust me, you won’t want to stop reading long enough to head to the nearest store.