The coolness of winter has now set in and so too the quest to keep warm and conquer the chilly temperatures. The debut novel Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L James will make your winter reading list sizzle.
June’s newest ‘Hot Read’ title Fifty Shades of Grey is a powerful tale of passion, sexual exploration and dark secrets. Set in Seattle, it follows the passionate love affair of college student Anastasia Steele and enigmatic multi-millionaire businessman Christian Grey. From two different worlds they are drawn together by desire and consumed by their relationship which requires Anastasia to play by Christian’s rules. With underlying themes of power and control, the tormented Grey and his specific sexual needs leaves Ana having to confront her own inner battles.
The worldwide hype and sensation surrounding book one of The Fifty Shades Trilogy is clearly evident in the 10 million copies sold, film rights in discussion and the banning of the novel in some U.S libraries due to its perception as ‘erotic fiction’. Despite a writing style that is unlikely to win any literary prizes for fiction, the novel leaves you wanting to further explore the characters relationship and read on to unlock the dark secrets of Christian Grey.
What did you think of the novel – did it live up to the hype?
Review by Lisa
This novel started life as erotic Twilight fanfic, so I’m interested to know how the author cleaned up her IP, to stop the Twilight franchise suing her. Anyone who has read it want to chip in?
I believe the first drafts of the grey trilogy used the Twilight character names ‘Edward and Bella’ for the main characters. These were then changed for publication to ‘Christian’ and ‘Anastasia’, apart from that change I found no other outward correlation to the Twilight fanchise at all within the story.
I did recognise some similarities to Twilight – the friend Jose is the Jacob character and Ana works in a local hardware store which Bella did too – but I think that the novel would have been better if the author had cut most of this out. I’m not sure about the intellectual property aspect but I’d say that E. L. James has made enough money now that she can afford the legal costs!