FIFTY SHADES OF GREY

by E.L. James

I admit I'm a bit of a book snob.  I never read the TWILIGHT series or the HARRY POTTER series.  Whenever almost everyone is reading the same book, I just seem to lose interest.  But everyone, everywhere seems to be reading the FIFTY SHADES trilogy, particularly middle aged women.  In May 2012 I heard on the news that the books were sold out everywhere in NYC and that libraries in three states had banned the series.  Recently there was a psychiatrist on one of the morning talk shows who commented that she was "afraid that people would be hurt" after reading the books.  HURT??!!  Additionally, adult sex shops cannot keep up with sales of some of their merchandise......what in the world!?

With over ten million copies sold in 37 countries, FIFTY SHADES OF GREY is the first book in a trilogy that is defined on its back cover as an "erotic romance for a mature audience."  The trilogy is noted for its erotic scenes with elements of BDSM (a condensed acronym coined in the 1990s to include bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism and masochism).

Minus the vampires, the FIFTY SHADES trilogy was developed from a TWILIGHT fan fiction originally titled MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE and self-published episodically on fan-fiction websites under the pen name "Snowqueens Icedragon".  It ultimately evolved into the best selling trilogy released in April 2012 that booksellers can't keep on their shelves.

Wanting to see what all the hype was about, I finally relented and borrowed a copy of the first book after two of my friends started whizzing through the series recently.  Honestly, by page 77 I couldn't stop laughing!  With such pithy phrasing as "you are quite the disciplinarian", "he gasps, his eyes wide", "I gasp...my heartbeat spikes", and my personal favorite, "I'd like to bite that lip", the author at least threw in a few "holy shits" to keep the characters more normal.  And these phrases are all within the same three pages!

While the author tries to elevate her writing with some well spaced fifty-cent words, the overall tone of FIFTY SHADES OF GREY can only be compared to a Harlequin Romance on crack!

Folks, ladies, please, there are so many wonderful books to read!  Aren't we more intelligent than this???

ISBN 978-0-345-80348-1
Pub. Date:  April 2012
514 pages
Paperback and eBook

FINAL EXIT A Suspenseful Tale of Passions Unleashed

by Joan Nelson - available in paperback or as an eBook

Take two self-centered and egotistical people; he’s married, she’s a new widow. He’s a successful surgeon, she’s a poetry babbling master of everything. Both are oversexed, selfish and narcissistic.  Add an overweight, whiny and possessive wife, a nefarious father-in-law, and two toxic grown children and I have just introduced you to the main characters in FINAL EXIT.

Like a Harlequin Romance on steroids, Bob and Jen very graphically hop in and out of bed like bunnies, all the while discussing art, flowers and beauty with such pithy post-coital comments as, “I like the Country French look.”

But FINAL EXIT would have no platform at all for the steamy sex if the wife of thirty years wasn’t a deranged stalker and if her father didn’t have dealings with criminals. When bad things start to happen, do our protagonists call the police like normal people? Of course not! They simply contact his good friend with the CIA who helps them change their identities and fake Bob’s death.

But wait! We’re not done yet. Bob’s CIA friend must really just work in the mail room because a PI is able to quickly locate them, bringing the reader to the kind of ending only found in a really bad “B” movie.

ISBN 978-160844-450-2
270 pages