E L James has become a household name in the US and, more than likely, worldwide. She is an up-and-coming novelist with no previous work, but this probably isn’t the last we’ll hear of her. Although the first two books of the Fifty Shades Trilogy were very mediocre to me, in a way Ms. James redeemed herself with the third one. Even though there is not as much sex in this book, the story itself is good.

This story, similar the other ones, is written in the first-person through the eyes of the primary protagonist, Ana Steele. This book picks up where the 2nd left off, when Ana marries her boyfriend, Christian Grey. Their relationship starts out as a purely sexual relationship. Christian is into BDSM and wants to enter a contractual agreement with Ana and make her his sub. In the first book Christian falls for her. The second book they struggle to deal with Christian’s past when one of his ex-subs goes haywire. There is also conflict when the person that introduced Christian to that lifestyle makes a pass at him and tries to break Christian and Ana’s relationship, but towards the end Christian and Ana decide that they want to get married.

The third book starts out during Christian and Ana’s honeymoon in Europe. Christian and Ana struggle for control and balance as they transition into a married couple. Several things make this even more of a struggle. A disgruntled boss threatens their family, one of the family members ends up in a car accident, and (gasp) an unexpected pregnancy takes place. There are also some very vivid sex scenes, which, aside from the locations and circumstances, are very repetitive in their wording. Some of them are BDSM in nature while others are just straight up vanilla.

I don’t think people who are into hardcore BDSM will appreciate this book very much. It follows the theme that traumatic life experiences lead to “kinky fuckery”, and that’s not necessarily truth. Throughout all three of the books Christian feels unworthy of Ana’s love, but she proves otherwise in a very surprising manner. At the end of this book we get a look into what Christian was thinking through some of the monumental moments throughout the series, as well as the balance that could possibly be the relationship they have with one another. I believe that the way this book ties into the other two makes the series more tolerable.

This book, although better than the other two, still reminds me of the Twilight series, which makes me like it even less. The main male character thinks he’s a “monster”, and the female character is quirky but falls in love way to easily. Even down to the “unexpected pregnancy”, it was very predictable to anyone who has ever read Twilight. I hope that these series are taken purely at entertainment value. Although I’m in a happy relationship with someone I love very much, our relationship is hardly all lovey dovey like it is in Twilight and in some moments in 50 Shades. Relationships are all unique, but ones like these are relatively rare, however doesn’t make them bad. Just because a guy doesn’t call you beautiful all the time like Christian Grey or Edward Cullen does, it does not mean that your guy doesn’t think it.