Yeah, yeah, I’m years too late.

PROS

• It kinda made me want to try Ben Wa balls. (Sidenote: I know I have played with these in regular stores as a child. And when I asked shopkeeps what they were used for, NOBODY said anything about kegels.)
• It could obviously inspire a fantastic drinking game. I will probably create this.

CONS

• It made me want to stab out my own eyeballs.
• It made me totally re-evaluate my priorities, because as a woman who identifies very strongly as a feminist, I was STILL angrier about the writing than about the abuse.
• I physically winced every time someone muttered, murmured, or said ‘hmm…’ It reminds me of a time when I sat for a tattoo for just over three hours. At the end of it, the artist was adding the scales to my dragon (Sidenote: I have, potentially, every single tattoo cliche you can think of) and my skin was already so sore and raw, that every time he touched the needle to it, I jumped. That’s how it was when fucking Christian or fucking Ana would murmur something THAT DIDN’T NEED TO BE MURMURED. I mean, if you are murmuring ALL OF YOUR CONVERSATIONS THEN THAT IS JUST THE WAY YOU TALK AND WHOEVER IS RECORDING YOU CAN JUST SAY ‘SAID.’ God. I hate this book! I hate it so much.
• It made me truly sad for the amazing writers I know who will never reach even a fraction of the success that E.L. James has reached because they refuse to simply copy and paste the same goddamn cliches over and over again.
• I hate this book.
• As if the writing weren’t horrible enough (guys, it is SO SO BAD), the ‘story’ is worse? I think? I don’t know, I’m still cloudy with rage. Anyway, the story is basically a (completely unbelievable, how on earth are you AN ENGLISH MAJOR IN COLLEGE WITHOUT A COMPUTER, virgin 22-year-old who HAS NEVER EVEN WANTED TO KISS A PERSON BEFORE? I mean, Why, WHY, WHY is that even a thing that’s romantic? She’s so virginal that she hasn’t even had an impure thought? How does this resonate with any woman, ever?) woman meets this (completely unbelievable 27-YEAR-OLD business mogul who is boring as fuck but it’s okay because he’s hot. And by the way, if you are 27 and worth MILLIONS OR BILLIONS of dollars, how much time do you have to creepily stalk people? Seriously? Isn’t half the fantasy appeal of dating a billionaire the fact that they are so busy all the time you don’t have to deal with them? And you can just sit around and play video games while they are at work, then shower real fast when they text you that they are on their way home and make it look like you were being productive all day? That’s my fantasy.) man, he STALKS her–literal, actual stalking that somehow millions of women find romantic? Because he’s dreamy? You know who else was dreamy? Ted Fucking Bundy.–she hems and haws, has weirdly antagonistic feelings towards her pointless roommate, has unrealistic sex, and then–spoiler alert–decides it’s not for her and breaks up with him. WTF? I’m pretty sure I wrote that story in 7th grade, except without the stalking, sexism, or sex, and there were some dirt-bike races. That was a pretty good story.