Never has a book seduced me like this. It was page up and page down of sexy sexy seductioness. Christian wants Anastasia to eat all the food. Several times they eat pancakes and there is always bacon. They visit an IHOP for Christ’s sake! How is that fair to a girl like me, an ex-pat that can’t just visit an IHOP whenever I crave maple pancakes with delicious creamy syrup? How is my boyfriend supposed to compete with that? My relationship has lost its shine. It will simply never be the bacon-and-pancakes every morning that Christian can give Ana.
And she can’t even eat it? How cool is that? She is just like starving herself, and Christian keeps wanting to give her things. He gives her an entire closet full of clothes, but Ana is like, so, cool and not at all pretty. She has to borrow dresses! She wears sneakers and jeans! Only girls in dresses find love. Or maybe they don’t, maybe it’s just the skinny girls in jeans that are soooo clumsy that they fall and trip exactly once in the span of an entire novel.
And don’t think it’s just Ana and Christian that are interesting fully fleshed-out characters, that one can identify and empathise with. No, we also meet Ana’s inner Godness, a squealing happy little thing that I can only imagine as a tiny Tom Hiddleston jumping up and down with with pompoms, occasionally sqeeuing and saying things like “you go girl!”.
And then we have the vaguely slut-shaming and oddly sentient sub-conscious, that mainly hides behind couches and calls Ana a prostitute for accepting gifts from an obscenely rich person. Who is also a controlling stalker, but whatever, he says she’s beguiled him! He doesn’t want her to ever leave him! He just wants to always punish her if she does the smallest things to express personality. But, you guys…it’s because he really cares!
Also. Pancakes.