Like many others, I only picked up this trilogy for the hype. I was hesitant on buying the whole box set at once instead of a book at the time, but now I'm glad I did, because it's addictive!
The quality of writing is okay, and the story plot is nothing extraordinary--it was actually quite easy to tell that this trilogy was originally fan fiction. Somehow though, EL James has created an addictive story that has kept me up for many nights in a row reading.
I rarely read adult fiction unless it's for school (most of my reading is in the young adult genre), let alone erotic fiction, but the sex was SO repetitive. Seriously. At first it was like "whoa", but by the half way point of the first book, I became completely desensitized of it. By the time I got to the half way point of the second book, I actually became annoyed and frustrated. Every time a detailed sex scene came up--and it's very often--I wished EL James could have just hinted towards it and skipped the details completely. It's THAT repetitive.
Christian Grey, or as I like to call him by his self proclaimed name, "Mr.Fifty Shades of Fucked Up", is round character, yet easily predictable. Reading through the first book, my eyes were narrowed towards his character as I was ever so skeptic. I kept doing a psychological profile on Christian as I read it. To me, it was very easy to figure out why his character is the way he is with sex, food, and being touched. It only took me the first seven-or-so chapters to figure his character all out. So when Christian does explain why he is the way he is, I was not at all surprised.
The story line itself was predictable, but I believe that figuring out Christian's character very early in the book causes me to feel so.
Here gets to the part I don't understand: despite what I have said about the book (and it's not the most positive), how is this book so addicting? How am I addicted to the story of Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele? I'm halfway done the third book now, and I've spent all week inside, glued to the books. Whenever I peeled myself away to do others things, I kept thinking "I need to know what's going to happen! I need to know!" It probably has something to do with the sexual tension--though I am annoyed and desensitized by it. There is just something about this fictional couple that I can't let go of.
This is not necessary something I'd read again, but it's cute. Well, the second book in my opinion is cute. I actually squealed at the ending...I just wish EL James could stop writing so many sex scenes in this trilogy.
