Brace yourselves, Everybody! It’s time to talk about Fifty Shades of Midnight Sun (My thoughts on Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian by E.L. James)

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.