Fifty Shades Darker: Book Two of the Fifty Shades Trilogy

Fifty Shades Darker

Really, I just wanted to know what all the fuss was about.

Fifty Shades of Grey, as you're probably aware is a runaway best seller -- an enormously successful work in the field of erotic fiction. I guess I should specify financially successful -- I make no claims about its literary merit.

So, of course, I wanted to take a look at it. I didn't want to actually spend money on it, however, so I reserved it at my local library, where I found myself #591 on the list. I guess I should be grateful that the library has it at all -- it's been removed from a lot of libraries all over the country.

Well, I resigned myself to a wait. After all, I wasn't all that eager to read it, my library cooperative had multiple copies, and -- let's face it -- people probably didn't take long to finish it. But then, on my last visit to the library I saw Fifty Shades Darker, the second book in the series, just sitting there on the New Book shelves.

So I checked it out and took it home. I read the first chapter, which was about a rather unlikeable young girl who had just broken up with her boyfriend and, apparently, started a new job. It was pretty whiney. I hate whiney.

So, next I started leafing through the book, looking for the "naughty bits." I found some. They weren't very good, and, surprisingly, they were pretty whiney too. Sheesh!

I won't be reading this book, or its predecessor, or its successor. I do not recommend it. (If you want to read some good erotic fiction, I'd recommend The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy  by A. N. Roquelaure, who is really Anne Rice writing under another name. And you know that woman can write, right?

Something else that I'd recommend as good reading are the Amazon Book Reviews of the first book in the series. They are just too, too funny! One reader used the search function on her Kindle  to count the number of times the characters bite their lips, raise an eyebrow, cock their heads, quirk their lips, blush or flush, murmur, whisper, clamber, and gasp. (That function alone is worth the price of a Kindle, don't you think?)