In the beginning of July I reviewed Fifty Shades of Grey Book 1 and as you can see it is now over a month later that I am posting a review for the second. I spoke quite a bit about E.L. James' writing style and the strange character development in that review and for the sake of avoiding redundancy I will not be restating these same ideas here. Although I was less than impressed by the first book, if nothing else it was somewhat entertaining and held my attention quite well. I actually made a point to read it when I could during the course of the week or so that it took to complete it. Unfortunately I cannot say the same for the second in the series. I found myself forcing my way through it, and as you can see it took me nearly a month to complete.

It seems like the author thought the book needed a little more "excitement" or "drama" and tried to add it in two separate plot lines. First is the introduction of Leila, one of Christian's ex-subs who begins stalking Ana and Christian. For some reason readers are supposed to fear a girl described as probably 90lbs soaking wet. Somehow she also manages to stretch this rather weak plot line out through the majority of the novel. Christian and Ana are constantly looking over their shoulder and the ever overbearing Christian won't let Ana go anywhere alone. The way she writes it's almost as if she is trying to make what was a cheep romance novel into something suspenseful!

The second source of unrealistic drama is the woman crudely dubbed "Mrs. Robinson" by Ana. She was introduced in the first book as the woman who introduced Christian to the world of BDSM at the young age of 15. Although their sexual relationship has ended, Christian and "Mrs. Robinson" are still good friends and business partners. Ana's main outrage lies in the fact that Mrs. Robinson is quite a bit older than Christian, old enough to be his mother. She fixates on this, blaming her for "ruining" him, consistently calling her a pedophile and rapist. All of this has been decided in Ana's mind before she even meets the woman. The worst part is that Christian decides to instantly side with Ana, the woman he just met, and dissolves a friendship of years with Mrs. Robinson.

I don't know what kind of suspense or drama E.L. James was going for when she drummed up these ideas for her second book but whatever she was going for she failed, unless she was trying to sound like a Soap Opera... if that was the case than bravo, you've managed to be even more ridiculous.

Amongst all of this Christian and Ana's relationship is growing, suddenly he decides he is fully capable of giving up his "evil" ways of BDSM and be all chocolate and flowers for her. Despite his efforts to prove this to her, Ana has trouble believing him and eventually they visit his psychiatrist who is more than willing to discuss Christian's years of treatment with a woman he's known all of about two weeks while Christian waits, unhappily, outside. Talk about inappropriate professional conduct huh? After being reassured Ana is able to live happily ever after with Christian, but that can't happen yet, E.L. James has the power, she can stretch the story, she has the technology, she can create a third book and make even MORE money!!! So out of no where is the final chapter, like something out of a James Patterson novel, the story through the eyes of a crazed villain, another person trying to tear their love apart, needlessly creating a "cliff-hanger" where there was none.

When broken down and looked at analytically the first book was terrible, the characters one dimensional, the plot line weak (and downright insulting at times), and the writing repetitive. Yet despite all of this, I was interested, I kept coming back to it. The second book that was not the case, even the sex got boring and repetitive, and the cheesy "drama" was just over the top. I found myself doing everything but reading and even putting the book down in the middle of a sex scene because I just didn't care.