I’d like to start out this
review by explaining why I decided to read and review E.L. James’ new book Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by
Christian in its entirety rather than do a chapter-by-chapter commentary
like I’m slowly doing with Fifty Shades
of Grey. For starters, after listening to the preview of the audiobook
version of Grey on iTunes, I decided
that I liked Zachary Webber’s narration of the book enough to buy the audiobook
version. I didn’t do that with Fifty
Shades of Grey because I don’t like Becca Battoe’s narration of the Fifty Shades trilogy. Another reason why
I decided to not do a chapter-by-chapter commentary of this book is because
unlike the original Fifty Shades
trilogy, this book isn’t broken into chapters in the traditional sense.
Instead, each “chapter” is labeled with a date. For example, the first chapter
of the book is label, “Monday, May 9. 2011” and all of the “chapters” in the
book are pretty long. I didn’t take the time to figure out how long each
“chapter” of the book is, but according to a commenter on Jenny Trout’s
website, chapter six is eighty pages long.
I’ll discuss my thoughts on the format of the book is different from the
format of the original Fifty Shades
trilogy and the fact that the chapters in this book are very long later on this
review; that being said, here are my thoughts on the book.
I’m going to go right ahead
and say that I actually like this book more than the original trilogy, which is
something that honestly really surprised me. Don’t get me wrong; E.L. James
didn’t magically become a literary genius in the time that’s passed since Fifty Shades Freed was released. This
book is still a pile of crap that has a lot of problems, but I do think that
compared to the original trilogy, the quality of the writing for this book is at
least a little bit better than the original trilogy.
Aside from this book being a
shameless cash grab, I’m guessing the reason E.L. James wrote this book is
because she wanted to try and convince the people who think that Christian
Grey’s an abusive sociopath and that his relationship with Ana is an abusive
relationship that they were wrong for thinking that. Unfortunately, I don’t
think that she succeeded in convincing people that Christian Grey isn’t the
horrible person they think he is. In some ways, Christian comes across even
worse than he does in the original trilogy.
That being said, there were
times throughout the book where I actually felt that Christian showed hints of
being a good person that people could like and feel sympathetic towards him,
especially in regards to his traumatic childhood. However, whenever I found
myself thinking that perhaps Christian Grey isn’t truly a horrible person like
I’ve pretty much always thought that he was, he would quickly go and do, say or
think something that would make you feel like you were riding on the Space
Mountain rollercoaster ride at hell’s version of Disneyland, and he would be
acting like an even bigger asshole than I already thought that he was.
I always knew that Christian
Grey was an asshole when it comes to the way he was written the original Fifty Shades trilogy, but I never
realized just how much of an elitist he was until I was reading the first
chapter of this book, especially the part where Ana is interviewing Christian
for her college’s school newspaper. As I was reading that part of the chapter,
I couldn’t help but think that E.L. James was trying to make some kind of game
out of trying to insult as many people as she possibly could with just the
interview scene. Based on that scene alone, Christian seems to look down on the
following kinds of people: People who go to college and graduate with a degree,
people who like to read books, and people who shop at Old Navy.
Given the fact that I
graduated from college with a degree in English, love to read and I’m a big fan
of Old Navy’s clothes, I’m guessing that Christian Grey would absolutely hate
me if he were a real person. If it weren’t for Christian acting like a
extremely creepy, controlling abusive boyfriend, I’d say that he and Ana were
perfect for each other and that they both deserve each other since they don’t
seem to like very many things in life. They are both annoyingly full of
themselves at times, they’re both stuck up, judgmental, and while Christian
doesn’t appear to hate absolutely everything in life like Ana does, he sure is
picky about a lot of things when it comes to determining whether or not
something is good enough for his standards. As much as I despise Ana and the
way that she’s written in the original Fifty
Shades trilogy, I still wouldn’t wish being in an abusive relationship on
her or anybody for that matter.
Another comment that I’d
like to make about the interview scene and what it was like from Christian’s
point of view, I thought that Christian’s reaction to Ana asking him if he was
gay on an internal level was pretty disturbing. When I was reading that part of
Fifty Shades of Grey, I found myself
having sympathy for Christian and not Ana due to what it was like for me
personally when I was in high school. I was basically harassed into coming out
by one of my classmates and he subsequently told all of my classmates that I
was gay. This was before I had truly
come to terms with my bisexuality, so it definitely wasn’t on my own terms.
Because of that, I’ve always had a great of sympathy for celebrities that have
to deal with rumors being spread in the media about them possibly being gay. However, reading what Christian was thinking when
Ana asked him if he was gay made me lose pretty much all sympathy for him when
it came to that particular situation, because it was rather sickening.
Christian basically wanted
to rape Ana right then and there just to prove to her that he isn’t gay. Even
though Ana had mentioned that asking him if he was gay was one of Kate’s
questions, Ana was still the woman that he wanted to rape in order to prove
that he wasn’t gay. As the book continued, it was established that his family
had apparently suspected that he was gay for years since he had never publicly
dated a woman, so I think it’s safe to say that might have played a big part in
Christian wanting to basically rape Ana. I understand that he prefers to be
very private when it comes to his personal life, but I think he should have
also realized that there was a good chance that being very secretive about his
personal life is probably going to eventually get people’s attention and lead
to people gossiping about him. Therefore, if you ask me, he has mostly himself
to blame for people gossiping about him.
I always thought that
Christian was supposed to be a very confident and self-assured person, but I
definitely think that Christian’s reaction to Ana asking him if he’s gay really
shows that he might not being completely confident in regards to his
masculinity after all. Regardless of how people might interpret Christian’s
reaction to Ana asking him if he’s gay, I definitely think that it was a pretty
bad move on E.L. James’ part to have him react to that particular situation
that way, especially at the beginning of the book in the same scene where
Christian and Ana meet each other for the first time. If one of the reasons why
E.L. James’ wrote this book was to try and convince people that Christian isn’t
as horrible as most people seem to think he is, myself included, then she definitely
shouldn’t have taken Christian’s behavior to a Law & Order: SVU level of
creepiness right at the beginning of the book.
Before this book was
released, I came across a lot of people online who were wondering whether or
not Christian has his own Inner Goddess equivalent. Thankfully, he doesn’t,
which is one of the reasons why I like this book more than the original
trilogy. However, Christian Grey does have nightmares throughout the book that
are essentially flashbacks to his childhood and his life with his biological
mother. As I was reading this book, I noticed that the way Christian talked
about his biological mother isn’t as harsh as it is in the original trilogy,
namely the fact that he constantly refers to her as a “crack whore”. I’m
thinking that E.L. James possibly realized that people might have an even
bigger problem with Christian talking about his mother like that than they did
when it comes to the original trilogy. Since this book is from his point of
view, doing that probably would turn readers off even more than it did before,
and personally I’m glad that E.L. James toned down Christian’s comments about
his mother a little bit in this book, because the comments that he makes about
his mother are just creepy and weird. I also feel like E.L. James was always
trying to make Christian’s biological mother seem like a total villain in this
book in a failed attempt to try and justify Christian’s attitude towards her,
which just doesn’t work for me.
One of the reasons why I
think the quality of the writing for this book is better than the original
trilogy is that this book isn’t nearly as tedious as Fifty Shades of Grey is at times. A big part of why I thought that
is because while I think Ana and Christian are both horrible people, I still
think that Christian is the more interesting character when it comes to the two
of them. Once Ana meets Christian, her entire life practically revolves around
him, and she pretty much thinks about him every second of the day, which gets
pretty old before the second chapter of Fifty
Shades of Grey even ends. While Christian also spends a lot of time
thinking about Ana and his relationship with her, he at least has other things
going on his life such as problems with his company and eventually “the
situation” that arises while Ana is visiting her mother in Georgia, forcing him
to return home.
Since this book is told from
Christian’s point of view, we got to find out what “the situation” was. It
turns out that a former submissive of his, Leila, came to his place and tried
to kill herself in front of his maid. I’ve only read a few of Jenny Trout’s
chapter recaps for Fifty Shades Darker,
so I don’t know if what “the situation” was ended up being revealed in that
book. Regardless, I’m glad that we got to find out what it was in this book
since they talked about it so much in Fifty
Shades of Grey to the point where it just got extremely annoying, since
they just kept referring to it as “the situation” without letting the reader
know what it was.
While this book isn’t nearly
as tedious as Fifty Shades of Grey is
at times, I definitely found the part of the book where Christian was reading
the background check that he had done on Ana and the part of the book where
Christian is reading through the contract that he wanted Ana to sign, as well
as her notes on the contract, both extremely tedious and boring. As annoying as
I think the whole thing with Ana’s very vocal subconscious and her super
annoying Inner Goddess is, I actually found myself missing them as I was
reading those parts of Grey. At least
Ana’s very vocal subconscious and her Inner Goddess acting all spastic and weird
with her countless props interrupted the monotony that was having to read through
the entire contract and provided some unintentional comedy during that part of Fifty Shades of Grey. The part where
Christian is going through the entire contract in this book was just…dull.
If E.L. James is going to
write more books, whether it would be Fifty
Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed
from Christian’s point of view, or something that’s completely unrelated to Fifty Shades, then she really needs to
learn that a writer doesn’t need to include numerous mundane details and
pointless scenes that at the end of the day add absolutely nothing meaningful
to the story. People aren’t interested in reading an entire contract full of
fake legal talk or a background check on a character that’s already been
introduced to the reader, especially when the background check that they’re
reading doesn’t really even reveal anything new about Ana that the reader would
actually care about. Those were pretty much the only two times where I found
this book truly tedious and boring.
As I mentioned earlier,
unlike the original Fifty Shades trilogy,
this book doesn’t have chapters in the traditional sense. Instead, each
“chapter” is labeled with a date, and as I also mentioned earlier, the
“chapters” are all very long. I have no idea why E.L. James decided to do that
with this book, and I think it was a huge mistake for her to use that structure
for this book. When it comes to the writing for a book series, I think it’s
very important to maintain consistency with each of the books.
As for the chapters all
being very long, I honestly think that while E.L. James is a terrible writer,
some of the blame for the poor quality of the writing should also go to the
people who edited both the original Fifty
Shades trilogy and this book. I think the editor should have told E.L.
James not to use that structure for this book. The editor should have also had
E.L. James break up the chapters into smaller chunks so they weren’t all as
long as they are. They should have also caught the fact that Andrew Carnegie
wasn’t the one who originally said the quote Christian mentioned when Ana was
interviewing him in the first chapter. Harvey Firestone was the one that
actually said that quote. Maybe I’m expecting too much from the editor, and I’m
definitely not an expert on writing and editing, but I definitely think that
the editing for both the entire Fifty
Shades trilogy and this book could definitely be a lot better.
A part of why I think that one
of E.L. James’ motives for writing this book was to try and convince people
that they are wrong for saying that Christian acts abusive towards Ana and that
the relationship between them is an abusive one. I say this because as I was
reading Grey, I felt like Ana wasn’t displaying
the same level of fear and feelings of intimidation that she felt towards
Christian in Fifty Shades of Grey;
even though this book is simply the events that took place in Fifty Shades of Grey told from Christian’s point of view. The
fact that Ana’s reactions to Christian’s behavior throughout the book seemed
very different from the way Ana’s reactions to Christian’s behavior were
written in Fifty Shades of Grey
really got me wondering if E.L. James was suddenly trying to portray Ana as an
unreliable narrator. I also found myself thinking a lot about writers in
general who intentionally have their characters turn out to be unreliable
narrators as I was reading this book.
Honestly, in the hands of a
good writer, I could definitely see Ana being a character that’s eventually
revealed to be an unreliable narrator. As I’ve read Fifty Shades of Grey, Ana has definitely come across to me as being
someone who’s socially, emotionally and psychologically stunted in many ways.
On an internal level, Ana seems to have a very bizarre view on how to handle
pretty much any social interaction she has with other people, as well as her
thoughts on romance, sex and the world in general. Ana’s outlook on pretty much
every aspect of her life and the people around her really makes her seem
immature a lot of the time in Fifty
Shades of Grey.
For record, my interest in
the Fifty Shades books has never been
due to the fact that they are considered erotica; that being said, the writing
for the sex scenes in this book is a lot better and definitely more explicit
and steamier compared to the sex scenes in Fifty
Shades of Grey, if you ask me. One of the reasons why I say this is because
Christian doesn’t constantly refer to his dick, other parts of his body or
parts of Ana’s body as “down there” or “there” like Ana constantly does in Fifty Shades of Grey. That’s one of the
reasons why this book made me question Ana’s reliability as a narrator, as well
as once again consider the possibility that Ana has some serious social,
emotional and psychological issues. Ana’s inability to refer to her own vagina
as anything other than “there” or “down there” really makes her come across as
being sexually immature.
However, if E.L. James
really did want to make Ana out to be an unreliable narrator, then she really
should have written the original Fifty
Shades trilogy with the story alternating between Ana and Christian’s
points of view from one chapter to the next in those books, or have those books
divided into several sections with some sections being written from Ana’s point
of view and other sections of the books being written from Christian’s point of
view similar to what the structure of Gillian Flynn’s book Gone Girl is apparently like. For the record, I haven’t read Gone Girl at this point in time. I’ve
only read the Wikipedia plot summary for Gone
Girl at this point in time, so my understanding of the book’s format might
not being entirely correct, but I digress.
The fact that Christian’s
point of view for the events that took place in Fifty Shades of Grey is being told in an entirely different book
makes it kind of hard to know for certain whether or not E.L. James wants the
reader to suddenly view Ana as being an unreliable narrator now after reading
this book though. The other reason why I’m not sure whether or not we’re
supposed to think that Ana isn’t a reliable narrator now is that I honestly
don’t think that E.L. James’ is a good enough writer to effectively write a
book where one or more than one of the narrators is intentionally being written
as an unreliable narrator; even though I do think that the quality of E.L.
James’ writing has improved somewhat when it comes to this book compared to the
writing for the original Fifty Shades
trilogy.
That being said, strangely
enough, I actually found myself liking Ana as I was reading this book. Much
like I thought with the Fifty Shades of
Grey movie, I think that not being privy to each and every one of Ana’s
bitchy, idiotic and annoying thoughts makes her a much more likable character.
Ordinarily, I think it’s important for a writer to do a good job of conveying
what their characters are thinking and feeling, especially when it comes to
establishing what’s motivating their actions. However, if you ask me, it’s
probably best that people don’t know everything that Ana is thinking, because
it just makes her extremely unlikable if the reader does know everything she’s
thinking.
However, I could also
attribute Christian not describing Ana’s reactions to a lot of the things that
he did in both Fifty Shades of Grey
and Grey as her being afraid of him
like she did Fifty Shades of Grey as
him not being a reliable narrator, too. Christian not recognizing that there
are times where he’s truly scared Ana could also be indicative of how he truly
is “fifty shades of fucked up” as he puts it. After all, when he’s hitting Ana
with a belt six times, he pretty much admits to the reader that he’s genuinely
enjoying it and afterwards he’s unable to understand why Ana was so traumatized
by the whole thing. Instead, Christian seems to only be interested in putting
all of the blame for Ana being so upset on her since she didn’t use either of
the safe words. However, I’m honestly not sure that Ana using either of the
safe words would have stopped Christian from hitting Ana with the belt six
times.
Despite the fact that this
book is supposed to be the events of Fifty
Shades of Grey told from Christian’s point of view, this book starts to go
into the events that take place at the beginning of Fifty Shades Darker. Personally, I thought was an interesting and creative
choice on E.L. James’ part, and I really like that she did that. If you ask me,
the fact that we got to see how Christian handles the aftermath of his breakup
with Ana is one of the things that sets this book apart from that book.
Honestly, I don’t think that people can rightfully say that this book is simply
Fifty Shades of Grey from Christian’s
point of view. I feel like getting to see Christian’s reaction to the immediate
aftermath of his breakup with Ana and how it was hard for him too was one of
the times where he showed signs of being capable of acting like a decent human
being.
Something that really
surprised me about this book was the fact that it was established that
Christian has been seeing a therapist for quite a while. Since I’ve only read
the first few chapters of Fifty Shades of
Grey, most of my experiences with Fifty
Shades comes from reading all of Jenny Trout’s chapter recaps for Fifty Shades of Grey and a few of her
chapter recaps for Fifty Shades Darker
and Fifty Shades Freed at random.
Because of that, I don’t know if it had been previously established that
Christian sees a therapist, but suffice to say that really shocked me.
It wouldn’t surprise me if
E.L. James decided to establish that Christian sees a therapist in this book in
an attempt to make Christian look better. A part of me can’t help but wonder what
his therapist’s credentials are given how fucked up and scary Christian acts
throughout the original trilogy. For all I know, his therapist might not even
be legit. Maybe he got his license to be a therapist by taking a quick online
course or something. However, given how much of a snob Christian is, I’m
guessing that he would try to see the best and most expensive therapist that he
could find. Regardless, the therapy doesn’t seem to be working for Christian.
If anybody can let me know whether or not it was previously established in the
original trilogy that Christian sees a therapist, please, let me know in the
comments.
One thing that I found
myself thinking about a lot as I was reading this book was Emma Chase’s Tangled series since with the exception
of the majority of the second book in series, Twisted, they are all written from the guy’s point of view. Much
like Emma Chase did with Drew and Matthew in the Tangled series, E.L. James notes how Christian’s dick is responding
to what he’s doing with Ana several times throughout the book. Surprisingly,
E.L. James didn’t seem to do that as much as Emma Chase does in her books,
which really surprised me since E.L. tends to do certain things excessively in
her books, such as Ana blushing practically nonstop or Ana and Christian constantly
whispering when they are talking to each other. I’m also glad that while
Christian does note to the reader that Ana is blushing at times throughout the
book, he doesn’t mention every time that Ana blushed in Fifty Shades of Grey. If he did mention every time that Ana blushes
when they were together, I have a feeling that pretty much every other sentence
in this book would be a comment about Ana blushing.
It’s no secret that Fifty Shades originally started out as Twilight fan fiction. Personally, while
I think Stephenie Meyer isn’t the best writer in the world, she’s still a much better
writer than E.L. James is, and I like Twilight
books. I’m still disappointed that Meyer has yet to finish writing and
release Midnight Sun, which in case
anyone reading this review doesn’t already know is supposed to be Twilight written from Edward’s point of
view. I’m mentioning this only because in my mind, Grey is essentially “Fifty Shades of Midnight Sun”, and I’m kind of
frustrated that E.L. James wrote this book because Fifty Shades fans were apparently begging her to write books from
Christian’s point of view, while Twilight
fans have yet to get a finished version of Midnight
Sun. (Sighs heavily)
All things considered, while
this book is rather poorly written, I still really enjoyed it, especially
compared to how I feel about Fifty Shades
of Grey so far. Thankfully, Grey
isn’t nearly as tedious as Fifty Shades
of Grey is at times, and it did a pretty good job of keeping my attention
for the most part, which is something I’ve definitely struggled with as I’ve
read Fifty Shades of Grey. The fact
that Christian does show hints of being capable of acting like a decent human
being at times throughout the book definitely caused me to become invested in
the story. It’s just unfortunate that E.L. James quickly sabotaged pretty much every
moment where Christian acts at least somewhat decent throughout the whole book
by having him come across as being creepier than ever before. Much like the
movie, I also found myself actually liking Ana as I was reading this book,
which I would definitely attribute to not being privy to all of her bitchy
thoughts in this book.
I know that there are a lot
of people who are upset that this book was essentially a repeat of Fifty Shades of Grey, only from
Christian’s point of view, but I would definitely put myself in the same camp
as all of the people that’s hoping that E.L. James will write books that are Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed told from Christian’s
point of view. E.L. James may be a terrible writer and the relationship between
Christian and Ana definitely isn’t a relationship that I can root for, but
there’s no denying that she knows how to write books that extremely addictive.
I also strongly recommend
checking out the audiobook version of Grey:
Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian. Zachary Webber did a fantastic
job with his reading of the book. I often find adults doing children’s voices
rather annoying when it comes to audiobooks, but I thought that Zachary Webber
did a pretty good job when he was reading the parts where Christian was having
dreams about his childhood. I also thought that he did a pretty good job of
reading Ana’s dialogue in the book considering the fact that he’s a man having
to make his voice sound like a woman’s voice. All of his voices for each of the
characters in the book are pretty good though.
That being said, my final
score for Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as
Told by Christian is 4 out of 10.
