50 Shades was E.L James' first attempt at writing and was originally written as a Twilight fan fiction novel, so I can cut her some slack for how poorly written this book is.

This book is an extremely mainstream romance novel. Turn around in any store that sells books, and there it is. So, needless to say, I was pretty excited about reading a book about the BDSM lifestyle. To say the least, I was disappointed in how things were portrayed. If you were expecting dark, don't bother with this. What got me was that, at one point, the main heroine, Anastasia, tells Christian to do his worst, and he takes his belt off and spanks her. This is supposedly a man who lives the BDSM lifestyle, and that's the worst he can do. The spanking is basically the highlight of any darkness. The characters themselves irked me as well. Christian, who's a billionaire playboy, is obsessed with Anastasia, going as far as stalking her at work and even while she's on vacation! Maybe I missed the memo, but last time I checked, stalking isn't sexy, ladies! As for Anastasia, I see her as a young girl who has extreme insecurities, whose own subconscious (referred to as her inner goddess) puts her down. I hated that.

I cheated and read this on my Kindle.

My negatives aside, 50 Shades was a fun read, and it was nice to finally be able to join in the discussions about it. When I stopped over-analyzing and actually read the story, I didn't hate it. The love story was nice, and the sex scenes were downright sexy.