#BookReview: Fifty Shades Freed by E.L. James

I've now completed E.L. James' Fifty Shades trilogy. (Don't read further if you don't want to be spoiled on the end of the trilogy.) You can read my review of Fifty Shades of Grey here, and my review of Fifty Shades Darker here.

Book Review

If you have read my previous reviews, you'll recall I got rather attached to Christian and Ana as a couple when I read the first book. When I got to its cliffhanger ending, with them broken up, I was eager to read the next one to make sure they got back together. As I read the second book, though, I became disenchanted with Christian's controlling behavior. I could no longer remember why I was so invested in them as a couple. I was also a bit bored by the pacing of the story. It does have some relatively interesting moments, but I felt they were too few and too far between.

Nonetheless, when I start a trilogy, I generally want to finish it, and I wanted to see what happened to Christian and Ana in the third book. I didn't love Fifty Shades Freed for the same issues I had with Darker: Christian can be controlling, and he can also be annoyingly childish when he's upset about something - and he's often upset about something he has absolutely no right to be upset about; the book also appears to be at least 100 pages longer than it needs to be, with unnecessary passages describing the French honeymoon and the ski trip to Aspen. There are some exciting bits, however, so with tighter pacing, it had the potential to be a good story. I didn't dislike the plot very much.

I do wish Ana had more of a backbone to stand up to her husband. She's still so in awe of him, and she's especially willing to give him a free pass on bad behavior because of his terrible childhood. He's not cruel, which according to Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan differentiates between the alpha male hero and his "alphole" (alpha asshole) counterpart. But he is a control freak, manipulative, and one of those awful types of people who get silent when they're angry instead of discussing things in an adult fashion. In a real-world partner, these traits would be a deal-breaker, but we all know this is fiction.



So I just hope that in Ana and Christian's HEA, she has broken him of some of his more unpalatable personality traits and gained her own strength and confidence at the same time. She spends a lot of time worried about his anger or potential anger, and life's just too short for that nonsense.

They've never been a perfect couple, but they do sincerely love each other. This was one of my favorite passages:

"'You wanna dance? Let's dance,' he growls close to my ear, and as he rolls his hips around into mine, I can do nothing but follow, his hands holding mine against my backside.

"Oh, Christian can move, really move. He keeps me close, not letting me go, but his hands gradually relax on mine, freeing me. My hands creep around, up his arms, feeling his bunched muscles through his jacket, up to his shoulders. He presses me against him, and I follow his moves as he slowly, sensually dances with me in time to the pulsing beat of the club music.

"The moment he grabs my hand and spins me first one way, then the other, I know he's back with me. I grin. He grins.

"We dance together and it's liberating - fun. His anger forgotten, or suppressed, he whirls me around with consummate skill in our small space on the dance floor, never letting go. He makes me graceful, that's his skill. He makes me sexy, because that's what he is. He makes me feel loved, because in spite of his fifty shades, he has a wealth of love to give. Watching him now, enjoying himself...one could be forgiven for thinking he doesn't have a care in the world. I know his love is clouded with issues overprotectiveness and control, but it doesn't make me love him any less."

It isn't the most graceful writing in the world; it's a little awkward. At other places in the book, James writes dialogue and narration that sound so utterly British, I can't imagine any American who wasn't a transplant from the U.K. uttering them. (Then I start reading silently but imagining I'm reading in an English accent, and then I start laughing.) This trilogy will never win a literary award, but as I mentioned in the first review, my investment is in the characters' relationships, not in the literary style.

Ana simply wants to feel graceful, sexy, and loved. Can anyone really blame her? In real life, overprotectiveness and control are relationship red flags, and very young women especially have to be careful about not letting their fledgling feelings of love overwhelm their reason - and safety. This is Ana's fantasy, however - not reality - and I can't help but be a little happy for her when, at the end, she has her sexy billionaire husband, her dream house, and her son and daughter to make her happy.



The Weird Thing

Now let's talk about the weird thing. In the epilogue, when Ana is pregnant with her daughter, there's this little exchange between Ana and Christian:

"He grins as Blip Two somersaults inside me.

"'I think she likes sex already.'

"Christian frowns. 'Really?' he says dryly. He moves so his lips are against my bump. 'There'll be none of that until you're thirty, young lady.'"

I think even Christian is a little weirded out by Ana's statement that her unborn daughter "likes sex already." I'm glad that Ana seems to be comfortable with her sexuality and accepting of her pregnant body, but in what sense does she think her fetus "likes" sex? Am I wrong, or is that kind of a weird thing for a mom to say about her daughter? I don't have kids - never been pregnant - so maybe it's not as strange as I think it is. Is it?

The Movie

I'm usually excited about movie versions of book I've read and enjoyed, but I have no intention of seeing the movie when it comes out some time in 2014. It's not so much that I don't "approve of" the actors who were cast in the roles of Ana and Christian. I don't even recognize their names. It's more that I'm only going to be happy my imaginary versions of Ana and Christian, not with anybody else's.

I usually don't feel this way. I think Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson are a great Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark. The more I look at Theo James, the more I think, "He'll be a great Tobias Eaton." I think I'll like the Divergent movie series. But I can't imagine getting into a Fifty Shades film trilogy.

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I finished 'Fifty Shades Darker' - thoughts

You can read my review of Fifty Shades of Grey here. I'll give you my impressions of Fifty Shades Darker in a moment - but first! I have a new release that just came out yesterday.

Here's the blurb: Food and sex – sex and food: two great things that can be even better together!  From soothing chocolate to spicy meatballs the stories in this brand new erotic anthology edited by two masters of the genre - M.CHRISTIAN and ALYN ROSSELINI - feature stories by the crème-de-la-crème of sexual and literary cooking and will tickle your sensual taste buds and stir your pot of erotic thrills.

Basting lovers, cooking orgies, steaming hot encounters, straight as well as queer taste treats ... the stories in HUNGER: A FEAST OF SENSUAL TALES OF SEX AND GASTRONOMY will push boundaries everyone's pleasurable buttons – both erotic and gastronomic: these are stories that will arouse, amuse, amaze, and whet your appetite for more!

Authors in this so-very tasty anthology include: SUSAN ST. AUBIN, DOMINIC SANTI, GISELLE RENARDE, ERIN O'RIORDAN, OLIVIA LONDON, JESSICA LENNOX, KIRSTEN IMANI KASAI, CÈSAR, SANCHEZ ZAPATA, GREGORY L. NORRIS, HEIDI CHAMPA, and BILLIEROSIE.

My contribution is called "Hungry Things." Follow the link to read a short sample; you'll notice the working title of the book was A Lover's Feast: Sensual Food Tales. "Hungry Things" is a sexy tale of George Gordon, Lord Byron and John William Polidori, transported to a modern setting. The physician Polidori has a consuming passion for the poet, even as Byron is struggling with his disordered eating. It's not about trying to make an eating disorder "sexy." It's about trying to love someone who's trying to rally the strength to fight something potentially life-threatening and not always rising above.

I've been fascinated with Polidori since I read Gothic by Richard Davenport-Hines.

I've been fascinated with Byron ever since 12th grade, when we read "Sonnet on Chillon" in British Literature and Mrs. Hess told us Byron was bisexual. The rest of the class was like, "No! Ew!" but that seemed perfectly natural and normal to me.

Hunger is available now from Renaissance E-Books, and it will be available from Amazon and through iBooks soon. You can get it right from your iPad or iPhone. I have not seen it pop up on GoodReads yet, but I imagine it will once it hits Amazon. (Update: Goodreads link.)

I've read the first three stories in my contributor's copy so far. "A Meal" by Susan St. Aubin is, in part, about the proper amounts and types of foods to eat so as not to ruin the sex that might come afterward. It's also about jealousy and the balance of power in open relationships. It's honest writing, and I really appreciate that. "Jeb's Wife" by Dominic Santi is about three military buddies and, well, Jeb's wife, who become a foursome when said wife becomes pregnant and insatiable. It's scorching hot - really sexy stuff. "The Sweetest Burn" by Giselle Renarde describes the erotic pleasure/pain possibilities of mole poblano - Mexican food porn in the more literal sense. (See, because when people tag posts with "Mexican food porn" on Tumblr, they're just pictures of really yummy-looking Mexican food. It's not actual porn.)

Without further ado, thoughts on Fifty Shades Darker by E.L. James.

I remember that I quite enjoyed the first book, which ended with Ana and Christian breaking up. The last sentence: "I curl up, desperately clutching the flat foil balloon and Taylor's handkerchief, and surrender myself to grief." This is like The Twilight Saga: New Moon ending with the blank pages that signify Bella's depression, and I wanted to know what happened next.

Somewhere - possibly on another book blog - I read a snippet of Darker and it involved another woman. I wondered if perhaps Christian and Ana were going to let another woman into their relationship. That's not the case, though. (Spoilers if you haven't read it yet.) There's Leila, a mentally unstable woman who used to be Christian's submissive. When Leila's boyfriend dies, she becomes vaguely threatening to Ana and Christian, but mainly to herself. There's also "Mrs. Robinson," the older woman with whom a teenage Christian had a relationship; Ana considers her abusive and hates her with a passion.

But Christian never suggests adding either of them to his relationship with Ana. If anything, Ana and Christian's relationship is much more conventional in this book than in the previous one; they become engaged.

In my review of the first book, I called Christian Grey an alpha but not an alph-hole, suggesting there are reasonable limits to his controlling behavior. I don't think that anymore. Early in Darker, when Christian gets into Ana's bank account without her knowledge or permission, I really started to dislike him.

I still sympathize with his horrible childhood. I'm confident that my favorite romance heroes are the really damaged ones - see, for example, why Lover Awakened by J.R. Ward is my favorite romance novel - but that shouldn't be an excuse to give a character a pass on emotionally abusive behavior. Or should it? This is fiction, after all, not an actual relationship in which I am a participant. I enjoy Heathcliff as a character in Wuthering Heights even though he's physically and emotionally abusive to his wife, Isabella, and abusive to the woman he essentially forced to become his daughter-in-law, Catherine Linton the younger. I can't help feeling that much of Heathcliff's negative behavior is really the fault of his mistreatment by Hindley and betrayal by Catherine; they forced him into an untenable position.

In real life, I would never tolerate his behavior in a domestic partner. In life, I make no excuses for domestic violence - one instance is reason for an immediate end to a relationship, no questions asked. Fiction is different. In fiction, the author gets to control the consequences of all the characters' actions.

I'm of two minds on this, because whether it's right or wrong, I care about Ana and Christian as a couple. I didn't really love Darker - the middle part bored me, with no real crisis to move the plot along briskly. I feel like it dragged out (but that have been, in part, because I left the book at home while my hubby was in the hospital and I read it only in little snippets each day). Ana comes into conflict with her sexual predator boss Jack (the embodiment of the entitled male privilege mentality), but she handles that like a ninja, although it does seem at the end that Jack will try to get some kind of revenge on Ana and Christian. There is a moment in which it seems Christian and his helicopter are in some danger, but this isn't until almost the end of the book, and it's resolved within a few pages.

Do I want to read the third book? Of course I do - I hate to leave a trilogy unfinished. But I don't have the same enthusiasm for this series that I had when I read the first book. I can't even really remember why I liked it so much in the first place. Yet somehow, I still want to be reassured that Christian and Ana will get married and live happily ever after.

On the plus side, I don't think Ana used the word "crap" quite as many times as she did in the first book.

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