The Fifty Shades trilogy has, in one sense, come a long way since its humble beginnings as an alternate-universe Twilight fanfiction. The books are bestsellers, and have inspired film adaptations. However, in another sense, very little has changed since the series was originally posted to Fanfiction.net under the title “Master of the Universe” — in fact, aside from changing the names of the characters, it seems to undergone little to no editing, to the point where the published version is still rife with grammatical errors and the occasional typo.
When I first heard about this series, several years ago, I was a somewhat naïve high schooler and was inclined to give the books the benefit of the doubt. After all, published fiction that began its life as fanfiction is an easy target for criticism and dismissal; doubly so when it depicts an unconventional sexual relationship. I expected it to be schlocky, but figured it had to be popular for a good reason. I went in with a fairly open mind, thinking it couldn’t possibly be as bad as some people were saying.
And I was right.
It was worse.
Before we get into the review proper, a few notes:
This is a cleaned-up, edited, and partially rewritten version of my original review. In this second editing pass, I have of course read the entire book (and part of its sequel); the first time around, though, I was writing the reviews as I read the chapters and didn’t know what would happen next. This may wind up leading to some inconsistencies where I sometimes wonder what is going to happen next and at other times talk about what does happen next.
Though nothing super terrible happens in chapter 1, which is why I didn’t slap a big ol’ content warning right at the top, this book deals heavily with abuse, rape, manipulation, etc., and all this is more often than not presented as okay (if not fun and sexy) to the reader. That is, the author will write a rape scene and apparently not realize that what she has written is a rape scene. I will be putting content warnings at the top of all chapters to which they apply, but you should know this about the book going in. Even if all you read is my review of this opening chapter, you should know that this is the direction in which the book is headed.
Goes without saying, but this book is headed in the NSFW direction as well. There is a lot of sex later on, and most chapters allude to sexuality even if there are no sex scenes.
Now, let’s dive right in.
Fifty Shades of Grey: Chapter One
Our protagonist / first-person narrator, Anastasia Steele — seriously, that is her name — begins the book in a bad mood. We get a physical description of her right away, because she is brushing her hair. In the mirror. The book literally opens with a mirror description scene. Yes, I know.
Ana’s physical description makes her sound just like Bella Swan, save for one detail; Bella’s eyes are brown, Ana’s eyes are blue. Author really went all-out trying to make this not be a Twilight fic anymore, I see.
In any case, Ana’s in a bad mood because her roommate Kate (who is blonde and gorgeous and must have been Rosalie in the original) is ill, and therefore can’t go interview the CEO of Grey Enterprises Holdings Inc. Kate’s a journalist for their college paper and it took her months to get this interview, so instead of sending someone actually competent (like, I don’t know, anyone else who works on the college paper?) to do the interview, she decides to send her socially anxious roommate who’s never done an interview in her life and clearly didn’t prepare for this one, either.
Well, this book is off to a great start.
Kate gives Ana a mini-disc recorder and a list of questions to ask the CEO — I think the author is trying to make Kate sound like she knows what she’s doing, but too little, too late, and it’s sad that I can use a phrase like “too little, too late” when we’re on page 2 of the novel. Kate also lends Ana her Mercedes CLK, as Ana’s car, an old VW Beetle, isn’t quite up for the trip from Vancouver to Seattle. If that sounded like a lot of product placement, don’t worry, it totally gets worse.
Grey Enterprises headquarters is a very large, modern, austere office building. It is so large, modern, and austere that it causes Ana to fidget nervously for half a page. She explains to the reader that she doesn’t know a thing about the man she’s about to be interviewing (you didn’t think to at least look him up on Wikipedia before leaving?), and that she would much rather be reading “a classic British novel.” Oh, I love Classic British Novel by Dead British Author! You’re just so relatable, Ana! It’s details like these that really make a story.
Ana waits in the lobby until one of the many attractive young blonde women working there tells her that Mr. Grey is ready to see her. She goes into his office and promptly trips over her own feet, catching herself on her hands and knees. Four pages in and the protagonist is on her hands and knees in the love interest’s office — you can tell this book don’t do subtle.
Mr. Grey helps her up, and she’s shocked to find that he’s young (definitely under thirty) and very handsome. If you’ve read Twilight, picture Edward but ten years older and less sparkly. If you haven’t read Twilight, and it’s important to you to know what the guy looks like, Grey has dark auburn hair, gray eyes (ha ha), and is tall. We don’t get much more description than that; fill in the blanks with the generic idea of what constitutes white cis male attractiveness that we’ve all internalized and you should be golden.
He introduces himself, and they shake hands:
As our fingers touch, I feel an odd exhilarating shiver run through me. I withdraw my hand hastily, embarrassed. Must be static.
You know how static feels so exhilarating.
After recovering from having tripped / the exhilarating static, Ana tells Christian her name and that she’s here in place of Kate, whose full name is — again, I shit ye not — Katherine Kavanagh.
Christian’s office is described as being super huge, super modern, super minimalist elegance. He has a bunch of little paintings on one wall, which are by a local artist, because he is Classy with a capital C.
The interview goes rather poorly initially. Ana’s horribly nervous, and Christian… well, I’m hesitant to call him a tool just yet, but he’s clearly aware of her nervousness and seems to find it kind of amusing, which should be warning sign number 1. Ana thinks he’s pretty arrogant when he starts talking about his success, but, I dunno, him being humble would likely come off weird too. Dude’s super fucking rich, and it’s self-made wealth; it’s hard to talk about that without coming off a little arrogant, at least not without sounding disingenuous instead.
Ana, perhaps as a nervous habit, keeps saying the first thing that pops into her head — this includes stuff like telling him he sounds like a control freak, to which he says that he “exercise[s] control in all things,” which is one of the most obvious and least sexy BDSM innuendos I’ve heard. Goes right over Ana’s head, though. At one point Christian says that he owns his company and doesn’t have to answer to a board, which is clearly bullshit as his company is called Grey Enterprises Holdings Incorporated but apparently the author does not actually know what a corporation is and didn’t bother to look it up.
The conversation continues with Christian constantly going on about how powerful and wealthy he is (seriously, dude’s a broken record — it’s boring), until Ana finally gets to the awkward personal questions section of the interview. Christian’s adopted, and Ana asks him about that — it’s clearly not something he wants to talk about, but I can’t really blame him — and then asks him if he’s gay (another question Kate wrote). For some reason (totally not homophobia, I’m sure) this question sets Christian off. Ana apologizes hastily upon noticing the displeasure in his voice and says that the questions are Kate’s, not hers.
This changes the direction of the interview; Christian suddenly takes an interest in why Ana is there rather than Kate. Another of his blonde employees pokes her head in to remind him of his next meeting, and he cancels on the spot. Uh… okay. Grey continues interrogating Ana, and I guess I wouldn’t really mind this scene except that she’s clearly uncomfortable and it’s only partly in the “oh no he’s hot” way. The questions are fairly innocent stuff — what are her plans for after graduation? does she know that Grey’s company has an excellent internship program? — but Christian himself gets weirdly intense while asking these questions, in a way that makes his sexual interest in Ana super obvious. As for Ana, well, something about the way he’s staring at her is making her feel funny:
His gaze is intense, all humor gone, and strange muscles deep in my belly clench suddenly.
Strange muscles. In her belly. She’s in her early twenties. But we’ll get back to Ana’s curious lack of knowledge regarding everything to do with sexuality later.
Christian offers to show Ana around, but she declines, saying that she ought to be heading back as it’s a long drive. Grey gets weirdly anxious over her driving safety (it has started to rain, but like… they live in Washington State, where it rains a lot, and Ana’s an adult with at least a couple years driving experience under her belt, so this shouldn’t be a concern). They shake hands, he walks her out, and they say goodbye at the elevator. There’s some more sexual tension shoved in there somewhere too but it’s really not worth relating.
Holy Cow! Alert: The author has a fondness for this phrase, as will become clear later on. It’s marginally less annoying than Bella’s “Holy crow!”, but still irritating, especially since I’m sure it was “Holy crow!” in the original. Our first example of the phrase comes four pages in, when Ana meets Christian.
Holy cow – he’s so young.
Oh, I Doubt It Alert: Ana’s thoughts on sick roomie Kate’s appearance:
Even ill she looks gamine and gorgeous, strawberry blonde hair in place and green eyes bright, although now red-rimmed and runny.
I’ve never known anyone to look “gamine and gorgeous” while suffering from the flu. Also, “strawberry blonde hair in place”? Who the fuck does their hair when they’ve got influenza?
Also, this:
The elevator whisks me with terminal velocity to the twentieth floor.
I can guarantee that it doesn’t.
Thoughts So Far:
It’s literally Twilight AU fanfic with the names changed. I’m not even convinced that this book saw an editor in between. One chapter in and I can already tell that this is one of the least competent pieces of published writing I’ve ever laid eyes on.
Neither lead has anything going for them besides the bare minimum required to drive the plot; Ana’s only character attributes are being timid, bookish, and clumsy, and Christian has no personality outside of being rich and domineering.
On the one hand, sure, it’s only chapter 1. On the other hand, I say that if you’re a published author and you’ve written a story that does not draw in your readers from the very beginning, you have failed. Sure, there are exceptions to the rule — you could argue that a lot of great literature starts out slow then builds gradually — but, again, this isn’t great literature, it’s a smutty novel. By the end of chapter 1, I should be looking forward to your characters taking their clothes off. Too bad I’m not.
If I were a wise person, I’d have left off reading right here. But I’m not a wise person.