Adult Fiction

Book Review – Grey

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Books-Fifty Shades of Grey

Grey by E. L. James
Published: June 18th 2015 by Vintage
Genres: Romance, Erotica, Adult Fiction
Pages: 576
Source: Goodreads

two stars

In Christian’s own words, and through his thoughts, reflections, and dreams, E L James offers a fresh perspective on the love story that has enthralled millions of readers around the world.

Christian Grey exercises control in all things; his world is neat, disciplined, and utterly empty—until the day that Anastasia Steele falls into his office, in a tangle of shapely limbs and tumbling brown hair. He tries to forget her, but instead is swept up in a storm of emotion he cannot comprehend and cannot resist. Unlike any woman he has known before, shy, unworldly Ana seems to see right through him—past the business prodigy and the penthouse lifestyle to Christian’s cold, wounded heart.  

Will being with Ana dispel the horrors of his childhood that haunt Christian every night? Or will his dark sexual desires, his compulsion to control, and the self-loathing that fills his soul drive this girl away and destroy the fragile hope she offers him?

Now, I think we can all agree that as far as novels go, the Fifty Shades Trilogy is extremely poorly written, repetitive, and predictable. However, there is also something about it that has resulted in it being the fastest selling book of all time. (I know, I know, what the hell is wrong with the world?)

Aptly named ‘Mummy porn’ by many, the sex scenes, for a BDSM erotic novel, are extremely dull and don’t actually add anything whatsoever to the story. I think, like a lot of people, I read the books purely to see what all the fuss was about. It wasn’t the sex scenes that made it popular, it was the love story, and mainly, Christian Grey himself.

For some reason, a highly damaged and controlling man (think Edward Cullen et al) is what makes female readers in the dozens tick. I definitely admit that it was the intrigue and the attraction to Christian that kept me reading the trilogy till the end. I don’t always love re-tellings of the same story from a different point of view. But this is Christian Grey.

So, as I said, although I don’t believe the books were well written or original in the slightest, I looked forward to reading the story from Christian’s point of view, because, to me, he was the only character who made the love story slightly interesting. I also held onto some hope that this might add some missing depth to the tale.

The retelling was marginally better than the original, because it delved a little deeper and you got to read about what Christian was doing whilst he was away from Anna. You got to see his love for her developing in a way you didn’t get to in the first novel. You also found a little more out about his past and how it troubles him. The sex scenes were just as boring. They contributed slightly more to the story as you learnt more about how Christian felt about being touched, and you saw a more vulnerable side to him than in Anna’s telling.

I also thought that E. L. James’ writing had improved, if only slightly. It was less repetitive than the original, except for stating that Christian felt ‘ten feet tall’ every several pages. Strange really, because there a millions of other ways I can think of describing that feeling of being, say, on top of the world, even just off the top of my head. I was glad that the phrase ‘my sex’ was only written once, as it seemed to be the only way Anna could describe her vagina in the entire trilogy. It used to make me want to throw the book at the wall.

The Fifty Shades trilogy is an odd phenomena. It definitely earned it’s name of Mummy Porn as it’s entire fanbase seems to be made up of middle-aged women with bored sex lives who have fallen head over heels in love with Christian Grey. His lifestyle is obviously desirable, and I doubt the books would have been successful at all if they hadn’t been set in a multi million dollar penthouse suite in Seattle, with a hero who just wants to spend all his money on timid, undeserving, innocent Anna. Who obviously, is so humble that she won’t accept a single gift. Her life is changed forever through meeting Christian. Helicopter rides, a whole new designer wardrobe, a brand new car, and the chance to be the one woman who can actually fix the damaged man. A lot of women are extremely drawn into that fantasy. I can definitely understand the pull.

However, it is a shame because I feel that James could have used this chance to retell the story as a way of improving the Fifty Shades trilogy. Considering it was from Christian’s point of view, it could have gone much, much deeper than it did. She obviously just does not have the writing talent or ability to do that. I felt that most of the book was very lazily written, and almost identical to the original. Obviously it’s expected that the scenes shared between Christian and Anna would be the same, but it definitely had the potential to be more intricate and detailed than it was. I was naively expecting a much more thorough insight into Christian’s thoughts and emotions than we were given.

So overall, if you can appreciate the Fifty Shades trilogy for what it is: a mediocre, poorly written and repetitive franchise, then I imagine you will adore this novel. If however, you were expecting something far better than the original, or you hated the trilogy to begin with, then do not waste your time with this book.

Book Review – The Sun In Her Eyes

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the-sun-in-her-eyes-9781471138416_hrThe Sun In Her Eyes by Paige Toon
Published: May 21st 2015 by Simon & Schuster UK
Genres: ChickLit, Women’s Fiction, Romance
Pages: 385
Source: Goodreads

two stars

Blinding sunshine; A bend in the road; What became of the little girl with the sun in her eyes?


Amber was three when a car crash stole her mother’s life. She doesn’t remember the accident, but a stranger at the scene has been unable to forget. Now, almost thirty years later, she’s trying to track Amber down. Amber, meanwhile, is married to Ned and living on the other side of the world in London. When her father has a stroke, she flies straight home to Australia to be with him. Away from her husband, Amber finds comfort in her oldest friends, but her feelings for Ethan, the gorgeous, green-eyed man she once fell for, have never been platonic. As Ethan and Amber grow closer, married life in London feels far away. Then Amber receives a letter that changes everything. ‘Before your mother died, she asked me to tell you something…’

I have been a huge Paige Toon fan since her debut novel, Lucy In The Sky, was released. I have to admit, I very rarely read ChickLit at all, but Paige’s novels have always hit the spot for me. They are summery, perfectly written, with extremely likeable protagonists – the perfect beach read. The Johnny Jefferson stories (Johnny Be Good, Baby Be Mine, and Johnny’s Girl) have always been my ultimate favourites and are well worth a read.

So, like many other Paige Toon fans, I was ridiculously excited for The Sun In Her Eyes, and suffered the excruciating one year wait for this new release. I finished it within a matter of hours, but unfortunately, unlike her other books, this one just did not do it for me.

This novel seems completely different to Paige’s previous works. Firstly, the heroine, Amber, is extremely dislikeable from the offset – her behaviour is selfish and she never sees fault in her own actions, even though they are questionable. Her childhood crush, Ethan, who she reignites her love for and ends up having an affair with, was originally extremely likeable, even if Amber wasn’t. We then see him for who he truly is – a cheating, weak, for lack of another word, idiot – and I nearly threw the book at the wall!

It wasn’t even that I was infuriated – it was just that I was sick to death of how dull the book was. I was bored! The only reason I read till the end was that I was hoping that something more interesting was going to happen. I liked Amber’s husband, Ned. He was portrayed as genuine and sweet. All I kept thinking throughout was how bad Amber’s judgement was to betray her devoted, kind husband for a smarmy childhood friend who she hadn’t seen in years.

Amongst all of this, Amber receives a letter from the lady who pulled her out of the car crash that killed her mother when she was a child. Throughout the novel, expectation is deliberately built up as Doris writes that there is a secret that Amber’s mother told her in her dying moments. Her message ends up being something entirely understated and not at all dramatic, as the build-up had suggested. This is fair enough, and the memories that Amber remembers during their heart to heart are sweet, but they are nowhere near as heart-grabbing as I imagine Paige had intended them to be.

The ending of the book was not any better. The protagonist, Amber, seemed almost proud of her affair. She finds out that she is pregnant, and after an initial panic that the baby might be Ethan’s, it turns out it is Ned’s. According to Amber, this means she can now happily get back together with Ned, and live happily ever after, without even telling him about the affair.

It would have been a much more genuine ending if Amber had confessed to Ned and perhaps, within time, he slowly forgave her, or she got the result that she deserved. The whole situation seemed wrong to me, and due to how unlikeable Amber’s character was, I wasn’t exactly rooting for everything to work out for her.

It was great to hear from characters from previous novels, in true Paige Toon fashion. Josh, the son of Michael from Pictures of Lily, and also Zara, from Thirteen Weddings, were both mentioned. Oh, and Jorge and Leo from The Longest Holiday, too, which definitely made me smile.

As much as I love Paige’s previous novels, this one was just boring, unoriginal, and utterly unstimulating. I wouldn’t even give it another thought. The contrast between her debut novel, Lucy in the Sky, which I enjoyed so much that I have read perhaps five times, is shocking. I really hope this is just a lull in creativity for Paige, and that her next read will go more in the direction of her first few books.

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Book Review – The Casual Vacancy

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casual

The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling
Published: on September 27th 2012 by Little, Brown and Company
Genres: Mystery, Contemporary, Adult Fiction
Pages: 503
Source: Goodreads

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A BIG NOVEL ABOUT A SMALL TOWN …

When Barry Fairbrother dies in his early forties, the town of Pagford is left in shock.
Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war.
Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils … Pagford is not what it first seems.
And the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations?

I am a ridiculously obsessive Harry Potter fan. I have been since I was seven years old, and I’m now twenty-two. So, I am not ashamed to admit that the only reason I purchased this book (on release date) was because it was written by my literary idol J.K. Rowling. How can anything written by a storyteller such as her be disappointing?

However, on my first attempt at reading it, disappointed was what I was. I’m not sure I even made it past the first ten pages. It was a whole two years later that I finally picked the dusty copy off my bookshelf and decided, determinedly, that I was going to read the whole thing, regardless of how disappointing it was. It is an adult novel, after all. Undoubtedly, it is going to be entirely different to the Harry Potter series.

The blurb on the inside cover of the hardback copy I possess, synopsises the novel as ‘a big novel about a small town.’ Barry Fairbrother holds a seat on the Parish Council of the small West Country village of Pagford. However, when he dies, unexpectedly and suddenly, in the car park of his local golf club, the town of Pagford is left in shock and disarray. Barry’s casual vacancy from the Parish Council brings on an election for someone to fill his seat.

On first glance, and even the first one hundred pages, it really does seem to be a dull and mundane book about a small town full of dull and mundane people. The deeper you get into the novel, however, and the deeper into the protagonists lives the author takes you, you realise and remember that yes, J.K. Rowling is indeed the best storyteller our world has ever known.

The novel is executed so understatedly, and so cleverly. It follows the daily goings on of the village residents of Pagford and of the nearby council estate The Fields. There is a sharp contrast, highlighted subtly, through morning chats in bed, telephone calls between mother and son, family arguments, and schoolgirl truanting, between the deeply troubled and addiction-riddled Fields and the snobby, gossipy and conservative Pagford. The blurb states that the book is about the election for the empty seat, but it is about so much more than that. There are times when I had tears rolling down my face, times when I laughed out loud, and times when I literally gasped in horror. JKR has proved herself to be an even more talented, honest and intuitive writer than I ever imagined her to be.

How is it that she understands the injustice and horrors of a family with a mother as a heroin addict? Her portrayal of that dark and misunderstood side of life is scarily realistic and shocking. Krystal Weedon lives a rough and raw life, at sixteen years old, in a dirty, unkempt house with her smack-addicted mother and her baby brother Robbie, whose mother keeps him in sodden nappies, even though he is three years old, and is hungry, moaning constantly, with a red-raw bottom. This brutally realistic portrayal literally made me cry. The horrendous gossiping and judgemental attitudes of the Daily Mail readers of nearby Pagford towards Krystal make you angry at the injustice of a world full of people who are incapable of empathy and are shallowly wrapped up in their own pristine lives.

This book struck a chord with me. It may have taken a while to truly understand and get into, but once you are in it, you feel as if you cannot get out. Rowling has achieved what I imagine she set out to do. Nothing much happens in this book. Everything happens behind closed doors, and every family is not as they seem to outsiders. Andrew Price’s family live in fear of their father, who everyone thinks is such a quiet, normal man, but beats them up just because he is in a bad mood and calls his son ‘Pizza-face’ due to his teenage acne. Sukhvinder Jawanda is a timid, self-harming and shy girl with dyslexia, and a mother who favourites her other two children over her, due to her inability to succeed on an academic basis. She self-harms and is cyber-bullied by Fats, the popular, lanky, and ‘cool’ boy at school, who plasters her Facebook page with definitions of lesbianism and hermaphroditism. Samantha Mollison is a middle-aged wife with two girls, and a husband she is sickened by, as he slowly turns into his arrogant and snobby father. She watches her daughter’s DVD of a teen boy band on repeat and closes her eyes when she has sex with her husband, imagining she is nineteen years old again, and that her husband is the twenty-one year old boy band member. Krystal Weedon is a foul-mouthed bully, but she is also just a sixteen year old girl, with the responsibility of her heroin-addicted mother and her underfed and neglected baby brother on her shoulders. Barry Fairbrother was the only man to ever understand her and give her a chance, and her position on his school rowing team was the making of her. When he dies, she is left with nothing, like before, and her status as the school bicycle is merely a reflection of her harrowed and troubled life and her lack of self-worth.

This book is full of nothing much really, but absolutely everything of massive, political and personal, importance. J.K. Rowling’s first adult novel is a huge political statement, and is honest, subtle, and true, true genius.