This book is a complete disappointment
How is book?
I was initially excited to hear that a BDSM novel had gone mainstream.  I was also initially excited to hear that a work of fanfiction had been adapted to be an original novel and sold in the mainstream market.  I thought these were exciting new developments, and could only mean good things.HOW WRONG I WAS.  This book is a complete disappointment.  Poorly written?  Don't make me laugh.  Poorly written would be a compliment, 50 Shades is barely readable, and what you do read infuriates you to the point of fictional-character-homocide with its lazy plot and character development (plot holes big enough to lose a bus in), overuse and misuse of words, labels, imagery, phrases and cliches, and what seems to be a case of an amateurish-at-best editing process.Firstly, no matter its origins, I paid for an original novel.  This means that somewhere between first draft and publishing, this novel should have been stripped of its "Twilight-ness" and reworked so that original ideas and facts filled those holes.  Unfortunately, this never happened.  Ana is so blatantly Bella, the only thing that has been changed is a name-swap.  Similarly, characters that might have been useful and relevant to the story when it was a Twilight fanfiction (eg. name-swapped-Jacob and name-swapped-Mike), are now redundant.  They often only relate to the plot in that they are clumsily used to tick the boxes of Twilight canon.  Yes, name-swapped Mike (whose parents also own the hardware store that name-swapped-Bella works in) inexplicably likes Ana/Bella, and appears in an early scene seemingly to demonstrate just this and thus show how desirable Ana/Bella is to both the reader and Grey/name-swapped-Edward (who is an incredibly busy CEO yet somehow has enough time to stalk Ana and find out where she works, then toodle down and stock up on cable ties, rope and duct tape.  Real subtle, real classy), even though Ana totally doesn't think she's pretty or worth any boy's admiration.  There are many characters which serve no purpose in the story, yet the reader is subjected to paragraphs or even pages of interaction with them: I am only poorer for having had to read pointlessly about how Ana/Bella has family out of town and she calls them regularly and all her irrelevant family history about her airy-fairy mother and her non-committal father.  Plus there were whole conversations of nothing - filler just to prove (or so it seemed) that these characters existed.  WHO CARES IF THEY EXIST, I DON'T WANT YOU TO PROVE TO ME HOW TRUE TO BELLA'S FAMILY SITUATION AND CANON FAMILY MEMBERS YOU'VE STAYED. THEY'RE NOT PART OF THE STORY.Ugh.  I could go on forever about how even in the smallest details, this book is a blatant mimicry of Twilight (the busted up old car, the clumsiness, the intrusive stalkerish-ness of the male lead), and I'm surprised copyright laws hasn't started calling it a plagiarism now that E.L. James is profiting from it.Secondly, when I buy something that has been professionally published, and has ostensibly been through a professional editing process, I DO expect that it reads like someone's made even a half-decent whack at editing it into shape.  If I were an editor and a copy of 50 Shades as it is now was handed to me to edit for publication, my first reaction would be to send it back to the author and get them to work on it themselves for a while, because by the time a book reaches an editor it should already be pretty polished.  So I am astounded that the published copy of 50 Shades is actually so terrible and the writing and style so poor - like I said, it feels like I'm reading a first draft which needs a lot of work, and this is after its been edited and published!There were inconsistencies within characters, such as Ana showing on several occasions that she was well-acquainted with swear words, and had no problems using them, and then on the next page saying "oh, my!"  She's 21 for God's sake!  Firstly;  even if she didn't like to swear she's unlikely to use such a dated phrase, let alone make it her every-two-pages catchphrase, and secondly; who alternatively swears freely then acts all prim and proper?  No reason is forthcoming on why Ana seems to have two distinct and contradicting sides of her personality.  I understand complex characters having interwoven facets of their personality, different aspects coming to the fore depending on the context, but that is not the case with Ana, she flips back and forth without any explanation or even integration of the two sides of her.On a related note: over and over again I wanted to scream or tear my hair out as Ana anthropomorphised her subconscious and something she likes to call her 'inner goddess'.  I have no idea what the point of either of these two ridiculous 'characters' was - both only really appeared when the issue of sex came up, and the subconscious always 'ran and hid' from Ana's scandalous thoughts (not sure where or how, I am convinced Ana's head is entirely devoid of a brain), whereas the 'inner goddess' was like an irritating and immature emoticon, and either strutted and puffed up her chest proudly, or jumped up and down and waved pom poms.  Jesus Christ, gag me with a spoon.  No seriously, it would be more pleasant than having to stomach any more of E.L. James's characterisation.But wait there's more - E.L James is so bad at developing rounded and realistic characters, or even two-dimensional characters, that she resorts to getting other characters to proscribe character traits.  When Ana first meets Grey for an interview for the college newspaper (In a scenario so ridiculous, artificial and clumsy that it could be the premise of a meeting in an amateur porn video - Ana's roommate is the head of the paper but is too sick to take the interview, and Grey is too busy being an incredibly important CEO of a successful company to reschedule, so Ana is clearly the only option to fill in, even though she doesn't even work for the paper or have any journalism experience) he describes how good he is at his job, managing his employees, his company's projects and interests, and information, and she decides that he is clearly a 'control freak'.  Um, no.  He's a CEO of a large and successful company.  He describes himself as having exacting standards both for him employees and in his own management of his employees and company, but not outside what is appropriate and REQUIRED for being a CEO.  Anyway, Ana likes the label of 'control freak' so much that it basically becomes Grey's nickname in her internal monologues from then on, which are needlessly lengthy and whiny and ill-informed.AND THE FILLER. OMFG THE FILLER. Not just sentences that were dumb and would make the story richer by being pruned, but paragraphs and pages of waffle.  Not even just waffle.  Poorly written waffle, with bad style, grammar and structure.Thirdly -- and I do not claim to be an expert or the one-and-only authority on the subject, and even within the BDSM community I'm sure there are a range of opinions on how realistic the BDSM relationship in 50 Shades was portrayed: I'm sure there will be many people with more authority on the subject than I who disagree with me, but I think many will agree with me -- I dislike how the BDSM relationship between Ana and Grey was portrayed.  I do not think it is accurate and I don't particularly think their relationships is a healthy one.  That is not to say that I don't think any BDSM relationships can be healthy: I believe that people can engage in both healthy BDSM love relationships and BDSM sexual relationships.  But Grey does not come off as a a truly caring and responsible master - he seems too selfish and possessive.  The BDSM community's mantra for safe practice is 'safe, sane and consensual', and I'm not sure that Ana and Grey's relationship always abides by that, particularly considering that her has no problem using illegal technology to invade her privacy and track her mobile signal before they are even involved; espouses the importance of full disclosure before getting embroiled in a sexual/romantic relationship with Ana, but leads her on and encourages her interest in him before he even tells her that he only does BDSM sex and only does contractual sexual relationships, not romantic ones; and always seems to remove Ana from familiar or neutral locations and whisk her off to his what is firmly his own territory when she is physically or emotionally vulnerable (instead of helping her get to a safe location that is 'her own' territory).I understand that romance books and erotic books don't always aim for realism (nor is it something their readers particularly seek) and are often designed to push the envelope for the sake of titillation and thrills.  However, I think when you are portraying a minority group (as the BDSM community could be argued to be), especially if you are not part of the minority group, you should be aware that minority groups are often misunderstood or discriminated against by the majority, and you have a responsibility to portray that community both accurately and sensitively.I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS BOOK. 