CONTAINS SPOILERS
I finally jumped on the bandwagon to see what all the social media fuss was about. The lead characters Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey meet when Anastasia arrives to interview Christian in place of her sick room-mate Katherine. What follows is slightly ludicrous as she a virgin agrees to embark on a sexual relationship with him based on a contract dependent on her submission.
It turns out that sexy, loaded has everything Christian is very damaged having been raised until the age of four by his crack addicted mother and was then rescued via adoption by the Grey family. The main problem is Anastasia simply isn’t good at being submissive, she struggles and begins to tame some of Christian’s issues convincing him that ‘vanilla’ sex will be OK. Gradually along with lots of fights and sex they fall in love.
In the second and third book their lives are complicated by her disobedience and his constant over-reactions to her friends and desire to socialise, she learns how to work her way around him and it usually involves the ‘playroom’.
The third book actually has a plot that doesn’t just involve sex and so get 4/5 stars compared with the other two which only get three. The problem is you have to have read the first two books to understand who the characters are and how they are related to Anastasia and Christian. With fiction the events of the story obviously need to be condensed but in this case Anastasia goes from virgin to sex slave, to married and pregnant in a matter of months, there is a lot of sex, that goes without saying and some of it tends to the kinky side as Anastasia learns to lover her own body. Her inner goddess and consciousness seem to constantly comment on her life and to be honest they get rather irritating as do the constant ‘oh my’, ‘whoa’ and assorted other repetitive phrases. The story line is at times a little stretched, for instance someone tampers with Christian’s helicopter, he manages to land, hike back to Seattle and comfort his distressed girlfriend and assorted family members, then to recover he indulges in hours of sex!
Anyway entertaining in its own way although the first book in particular has a rushed feeling it held my interest enough for me to read the remainder of the trilogy, even if at times I was rolling my eyes and biting my lip!
