50 Shades of Crap!

From as long as I can remember, I've never given into any hype whatsoever. Unless it was a favourite band of mine, TV shows etc that I have loved for years. Even when the big phenomenon of Harry Potter was happening for years, I didn't decide to read any of the books until the very last book was released. Then I decided for myself whether I liked a series of books or not. This is simply because I like to choose for myself what I like, and not give in to the puff. I really cannot explain it. I honestly think it has to do that when everything is said and done and when all the dust settles, something new comes along and any hype that did occur has moved onto something new, leaving the old hype behind.

So when the book 50 Shades of Grey was released I was intrigued. I didn't know what to make of it, and the only thing that I knew about the book was that some scenes within the book are very explicit and that the author of the book got her inspiration from Twilight. Now anyone who knows me knows how much I dislike Twilight with a passion. It wasn't until last year that I decided to sit down and watch a couple of the Twilight movies, as I thought 'I've been saying how much I don't like Twilight, when the only information that I got is from the internet and I never formed my own real opinion.' But as I soon found quickly enough, it was exactly what I expected it to be.

Now before I go on about the reasons why I don't like 50 Shades of Grey, spoiler alert warning to anyone who hasn't read the book and are thinking of reading it.

This book comes very very close to the reasons why I do not like Twilight. The main female character in the book (Anastasia) has no spine whatsoever. In the 21st Century to come across any fiction about a female character who gives in and let people walk all over her annoys me. Women for centuries have been fighting for their right to speak up and let it be known that they aren’t inferior, and this book puts all that to shame.

Christian the main male character in the book and also Anastasia’s love interest is a complete and utter control freak. From the moment he meets Anastasia, he warns her countless times that he is a bad person to know and that she should run for the hills. And at the beginning of the book when she tries to forget about him, he either meets up with her again just to see her or sends her expensive gifts, which draw her back to him and the whole process starts all over again.

When he finds out that she doesn't have a computer (though how a college student almost graduate has survived 4 years without a computer is beyond me), he buys her the most expensive MAC computer which hasn't been released yet. And why a major CEO of a very large corporation uses a MAC computer, is beyond me as well.

When she doesn't reply to a phone call or email right away, he decides then to buy her a new Blackberry phone so she can constantly be in contact with him without any excuses. Later on when he sees the type of car she drives, he automatically doesn't like it and decides to buy her a new car. Through all this she is protesting, but very very little. Doesn’t really put up any kind of fight at all and within moments decides to keep everything he has bought her and the subject is dropped.

Christian is also a complete stalker. No matter where she seems to be, he always is around the corner. In one part of the book she tells him that she needs to get away for a few days to visit her mum so that she can have a bit of vacation time after her graduation, guess where she finds him on the second day of her holiday apparently contemplating buying land in the area. Yeah right!

Though funnily enough, Christian to me isn’t the bad guy. Despite everything that he does, he isn’t really the reason why I’ve come close many times to through the book across the room. It’s the female character. This is mainly because Christian tells Ana constantly that she has a choice in what happened. If he does something she doesn’t like, to tell him know what her feelings are about the situation or just simply walk away. Now I understand that she is in complete thrall with Christian and doesn’t just want to walk away, but she he ample opportunity to express her opinion.

As I mentioned before, she has no spine whatsoever. She doesn’t stand up for any of her beliefs at all. She lets everyone walk all over her. Even a good male friend of hers tries to make a move on her while she is intoxicated, Christian comes to the rescue (being the stalker he is), and just about the very next day while her friend has been trying to call her all day to apologize, she forgives him and gives him a big hug and pretends it never happened!

Her best friend and roommate warns her countless times that she doesn’t think that Christian is a good man for her, as she is constantly seeing Ana upset all the time, never at one point does she listen to her best friend of 4 years advice. Even though the book mentions that her best friend likes to prey constantly and never let a subject go. But apparently, when it comes to Ana’s relationship with Christian she is suddenly distracted and drops the conversation.

There is also no real plot to the story either. Everything is pretty much skipped and missed without any real detail. Excluding of course the explicit scene in the book, which tells every tiny detail – and sometimes ever gross detail? While she is at her graduation, her best friend tells an amazing speech apparently. What the speech is about, I have absolutely no idea as the book doesn’t mention what the speech is about. Christian also has a speech during this graduation and reveals a lot about himself which Ana is very shocked as he rarely reveals anything about himself. What it was about, have no idea either! All we know is that he didn’t have much food when he was younger, which could mean a lot of things.

Though I can somewhat understand maybe why anyone would both to read all three books within the series. I suppose to find out whether Ana suddenly gets a back bone and stands up for herself, and maybe to see if the relationship at all can last between an utter control freak stalker, and a complete spineless gutless woman.