Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L James | Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

See, the thing about hype is that it rarely lives up to expectations for most of its audience. And let me tell you: this book obviously has some serious hype to back it up and its fanbase is massive. My ex-girlfriend was one of those people — completely obsessed with this novel and the remaining books in the trilogy.

Naturally, she had me sit down and read the first book. And by sit down, I mean she essentially forced me to read it and as a good girlfriend, I did.

I knew three things when I started it and the facts were these (okay — I’ll admit it now, the reason I’m writing it that way are because I just had a Pushing Daisies rewatch and seem to think I am the narrator. Sorry!): it was at one point a Twilight fanfiction, it is an erotica lovestory and it features BDSM. I often got the fanfiction confused with another Twilight fic with similar themes called The Submissive -- which, admittedly, as a horny teenager I read eagerly and waited patiently for each update. That being said, I never could get into this story even in the fanfiction days.

So firstly I want to say that it was really, really badly written. I found myself physically cringing on more than one occasion while reading. And normally, these sorts of books — this genre, things aren’t always written that well anyways. People don't read erotic novels for mind blowing writing; they read it for fantasy. But this reached beyond that in terms of really awful writing. It was repetitive and though there were many details in it they just weren't that captivating for me, personally.

I wanted to like it. Really, I did.