Where the first book in the series was self-indulgently entertaining to read, this book kind of kicked it down a few notches. Oh sure, there's some eye rollingly bad scenes of the sexual and non-sexual kind, but ultimately this book just didn't deliver on the promise of Fifty Shades of Grey. All I can ultimately assume is that James just got a little bored while writing this one. 
 I do have to give credit where credit is due- James's writing style did improve in this book, although if she didn't grow even slightly as an author by this point then I'd have been surprised. Most should improve with practice, after all. The downside of this is that the Ed Wood badness of her previous writing style is what really made the first book such fun to read. There are some sweet scenes here and there, but in the end the best parts of the book were the minor characters, most specifically Christian's exes to varying extents. (Although one of them is portrayed in such a way that didn't really match up with later and more extreme actions.) 
 There's less sexual content in this entry, which I also think hurt the book. James comes alive when she's writing bad sex scenes and trying to shock. The general idea of the second book: the revealing of Grey's past and the progression of his relationship with Ana is interesting in theory, but I don't think it required 532 pages to tell. If this had been about 100-150 pages shorter, the story would have been much improved because the later half of the novel just dragged on. This is despite several revelations that are supposed to be gasp-worthy. 
 I liked the book well enough to warrant wanting to read the final book, but if the first book had been this dull I probably wouldn't have bothered with the next one in the series. It was just a disappointing read overall. My score is 2.5 stars, but since I can't give half stars I'll round it up to a 3.