Romance Review: Fifty Shades Darker

Fifty Shades Darker

By E L James

Cover Art: I love James' simple covers.  Once the book is read it is like a secret little joke between you and the other readers... before you blush at being caught reading erotica in public and then the other person does the exact same thing. Then you both stare awkwardly at each other and say "wow, what a book, huh?."  I am not speaking from experience. 



Sequels to romance novels are hard to come by.  Just like a kinky Jane Austen Novel where the story ends happily ever and everyone gets a wedding breakfast, romance novels generally behave the same way.  Sure, the characters may pop up occasionally somewhere in another novel, usually deliriously happy with hoards of children and secret smiles for each other, but for the most part happy endings happen.

Unless you are Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele. 

In book one, which if you have not read, go back to my previous post here or you will RUIN THE WHOLE DAMN THING.... we learn the following things:

1) Mr. Grey likes it super kinky

2) Ana likes it kinda kinky

3) Ana can not deal with the full blown kinky so she leaves Mr. Grey.

Now that we are up to speed on that whole thing let's go into our usual format:

The tease: "In a class all by itself." AKA - Too spicy to talk about on a book cover.  Can you imagine EW quoting something like "We liked the anal probing" HA!

The heroine: Anastasia Steel: Employed editor's assistant on her way to owning the company and her very own bazillionaire.

The hero: Christian Grey, CEO Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc.: Bazillionaire with mommy issues, control issues, jealousy issues....  lucky for him, he has floppy hair.

The witty sidekicks: All the sidekicks from book one pretty much disappear so you can become acquainted with the a creepy book editor, Mrs. Robinson the lady who showed Christian all his moves, and a crazy ex-lover who may or may not want to shoot everybody.  Of course magical attractive men show up randomly so Christian can flex his jealous caveman skills, but really, who cares about them with all the weirdos running around?

Her dark secret:  She does not feel she is good enough for him.  She keeps finding all these crazy things that should make her run for the hills.  People want to kill her or molest her all the time. 

His dark secret: Where to begin here?  The man is a self proclaimed sadist.  His ex relationships are all completely messed up.  He may or may not have multiple personalities when it comes to him coping with things.  In short, he really doesn't have too many more issues than most of my past boyfriends, as well as those of my friends.  No wonder we like this book... we are all attracted to crazy!

Back to the topic:

The seduction:  Near death experiences, PDA in elevators, classical music, boats, costume parties... the whole book is one big seduction.

Locations for romance: Bedrooms, elevators, pianos, billiard tables, boats,desks, bathrooms, hallways, and of course dungeons. This book is only supposed to take place within what?? 16 days?!?  These people must have 48 hours in a day to do it all the time!  Seriously, do they ever brush their teeth!?!?

Kink:  Book 1 is considerably shocking to a girl who has only read your average bodice ripper, however I felt like book 2 was considerably more vanilla.  Since these people behave like rabbits through most of the 532 pages, you sort of become numb to their sexy times until about the end, when the words butt plug jump out at you.  That's right EW... you can go ahead and steal that for your review of the book.

The Fabio Factor:  7/10 - Christian Grey is starting to be like the hot crazy man we all have (or have had).  Sure, we love him.  Sure he is a fox in the sack.  Sure, we want to fix him so we are going to stick it out, but we cannot help but feel slightly annoyed by his mood swings and crazy... even if he does violate us in elevators.

Oh look.  Fabio also smells intoxicating, plays instruments and looks dashing in a boat/bathtub. 

blush factor: 8/10 - Maybe it is becasue I usually only buy books available at a grocery store. Maybe it is the fact that I had become sort of numb to the spankings, handcuffs and general BDSM things in the book becasue it seems like the only thing this book has going on is them doing it vanilla with a splash of chocolate syrup and escaping death then fighting,  but the butt (he he) definately made me blush a deep crimson.  Bravo to James for keeping it spicy.