Fifty Shades Darker

Fifty Shades DarkerFifty ShadesE.L. James

Mar 9

Written By Ally Talley

Fifty Shades #2

By E.L. James

TheStory

Following Ana’s choice to break off her relationship with Christian, she has started a new career in publishing. But her torment over their broken relationship consumes her. When Christian proposes a new type of relationship, Ana agrees.

The two come back together and attempt to navigate their boundaries with one another. On top of their new dynamic, Ana must navigate Christian’s past, his ex-mistress, and a new enemy seeking to destroy them.

TheReview

The beginning is just a lot of sex, really. Like a lot. But the storyline picks up about a quarter of the way through the book.

I thought the drama was going to be really manufactured, attempting to give a storyline because of how much the relationship and sex was focused on in the beginning, but it wasn’t like that at all. The storyline got so good! I was very invested in what was going on and I even laughed out loud a few times. Much funnier than the last one.

Throughout the book, Christian actually gets his stick out of his butt and Ana becomes more comfortable in her own skin.

That being said, Ana remains backbone-less. She gives into Christian’s crazy every time. Whenever she is angry, she lets him distract her - often with sex. I was yelling at her constantly.

And Christian! He legitimately just thinks that he can do no wrong. He’s very narcissistic. The salon with Elena?! Moron. Now, this isn’t necessarily his fault, but the Leila drama?! Get it together Christian.

He’s so withholding of information, that it’s impossible for Ana to be prepared for anything regarding him or his past. He constantly insists on her telling him everything but he’s like a locked, iron-clad safe about any information regarding himself. It explains why, but still. Even though Christian is CERTAINLY Fifty Shades, he is so sweet with Ana, even when he’s being a moody little dummy.

On a minor note, for everyone talking about the Red Room all the time, it’s barely in this book at all. And it wasn’t in the last book much either. It’s not really a big deal, honestly, so I was surprised. The spicy scenes are a little dirty and there are a LOT of them, but they aren’t that wild, especially given what I was expecting from the way people talked about this book over the years. The amount really took me out of the story sometimes. I still expected it to be far dirtier though. It’s not that dirty, just too frequent.

The ending was really good and super sweet. It had a good amount of drama and relationship building, but too many spicy scenes that just didn’t slap with the storyline. It didn’t end on a cliff hanger but it did set up for the next book.

P.S. The end of Chapter 13 and the beginning of Chapter 14 was SO GOOD. It was gut wrenching and heart breaking. I loved it so much, I went back and reread it just to experience it again.