Okay so this book has gotten rave reviews and awful reviews and I guess I'm somewhere in the middle. I have definitely read worse books (I read about a book every other day, I'm bound to run into some bad ones). This book was lent to me by my daughter's grandmother (I don't like to dwell on that either). I had been torn about reading it because I had heard that it was poorly written and Twilight fan fiction. I never even finished the Twilight series because I got fed up with Bella's lack of personality. Anyway, the main reason I gave this 3 stars is because I expected it to be a LOT worse, so it probably would've received a lower score if I had been expecting a good book.

Now if you're a bored housewife, that doesn't take this book seriously on what BDSM is really all about, than this book isn't so horrible. I was able to read this book in about 4 days (I am a very fast reader, but I have 3 kids and I baby-sit, not really the kind of thing I read around them.).It's a little over 500 pages, so it is definitely not a light read, other than the actual content.

I would definitely want to group this more with 'romance' than 'erotica'. The 'love story' was the main focus, and like a romance novel it was peppered with sex scenes. So if you're looking for a more modern romance novel, this book isn't TOO bad. I enjoyed it more than I expected it to, so if you go in with low hopes, you might enjoy it as well.

On the other hand, if you're looking for actual erotica, this book is for only the prudest of souls, and they should be given some safety warnings so they don't hurt themselves. The sex scenes are a little vanilla, even though it's supposed to not be at all. I kept waiting to get to the 'kinky' parts and was extremely disappointed. I guess there's still enough sexually repressed women that this seems shocking?

I really can't figure out what all the hype was about. Oh, and the writing skills of E.L. James, SO repetitive, and every time that crazy Anastasia spoke to her inner goddess, I wanted to ask why she wasn't in the nut house. I was wondering for a minute if there was something wrong with ME, because my alternate personalities definitely don’t scold me. So, again, it (probably) won't hurt you to read this for fun, but if you were looking for a GOOD book I'd look elsewhere.