Review: Fifty Shades Darker by EL James

I don’t even know where to begin with this. I felt like banging my head against the wall while reading the second book in the Fifty Shades triology, Fifty Shades Darker. I honestly don’t know why I’m even reading these books.

The writing is so bad it makes me cringe. Repetitive doesn’t even cover it. It’s like having a bad song stuck on your mind, the same words, phrases, and descriptions are used to exhaustion. I found myself skimming through passages because it all felt like déjà vu. I mentioned in my review of the first book that I felt a kind of love/hate relationship to the book. Well, it’s more hate now, and the fact that I’ve contributed to the author by buying the whole trilogy kind of makes me want to gag.

Sure, the story was kind of intriguing at first, and with the classic cliffhanger at the end of the first book I thought that maybe the story would get better in the second book. I was so wrong.

Not only is the writing some of the worst I’ve ever read (there’s lists of the 50 worst synonyms in Fifty Shades of Grey), the story and characters are so weak (here’s Ellen Degeneres making fun of the books). Like the main character Anastasia, she’s such a moron. The conversations between her and Christian are just mind boggling. There is absolutely no substance to their relationship whatsoever. And the sex? EL James obviously lost her imagination and is repeating the same scene over, and over again, describing it with the same exact words no less.

I’m torturing myself through the final installment, Fifty Shades Freed right now, and stifling my desire to whip out my highlighter to mark all the errors and repetitive use of bad synonyms. Oh, such a waste of time, but what else is there to do when all it does is rain? Finish what you started, right?