Adult – ★★ – Goodreads – Amazon – B&N – iBooks

I have no idea why I even picked this one up. I wasn’t a big fan of the ones in Ana’s pov, and I guess I was feeling spontaneous. or dangerous even.

This book in one sentence: Well then…we got a good look at the other side of the storm and it wasn’t that pretty.

Okay, let’s be honest. I didn’t really like the other books so I don’t know what possessed me to pick this one up. Maybe I wanted an inside look at what was going on in crazy Christian’s mind. Maybe I wanted to psychoanalyze Christian’s thoughts and see why he was a persuasive, manipulating, and controlling lover. Maybe I was just curious and wanted to put myself through torture. (Probably the last one.)

I can’t even count how many times I wanted to put this book down. I cannot count how many times I labeled Christian as “possessive” and “controlling” in my notes. I cannot count how many times Christian said “Baby” in his thoughts. I can’t even count how many times Christian’s cock twitched (which is actually pretty weird sometimes because it was almost random at times). There are so many things that irked me and at the same time, I enjoyed reading the book because I enjoyed taking notes on the things I was displeased about.

In the end, my whole problem with this series is that it is seen as romance and people love Christian. I have no problem with the bdsm, I have no problem with their “contract relationship”, and I actually have no problem with the characters themselves. My problem is that the way this relationship is set up, the things that happen, and how this relationship is portrayed and seen as romantic and sexy even.

When I was 17ish, I hated this story because I thought it was garbage and I thought there were better books out there. I hated it because it was fanfiction and deemed it unworthy of time. I feel it was so wrong to hate it for those reasons becuase there are actually some pretty damn good fanfictions! At 21, I still dislike this series, but because of the reasons mentioned in the previous paragraph. I just hope that the people who like, love, and LOVE this series know the difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships.

Other than those tidbits, I’ll probably read the next one because I kinda wanna know what’s going through his head in the second book, even though I only vaguely remember the second book. And I also think I love this torture.

With this book overall, I feel like it was so much longer than it needed to be and it took me forever to finish it, but to say the least, it was…entertaining.