RATING GUIDE:
5 – A keeper!
4 – Very good
3 – Passable
2 – I’d rather read a telephone book
1 – An absolute bomb.
Read at your own risk!
I actually had high hopes for the
last installment in EL James’ trilogy, since the second book, Fifty Shades
Darker, seemed quite promising.
Alas, I was wrong. Call it a
case of premature celebration. Reading Fifty
Shades Freed feels like being stuck in a bad marriage with no end in sight
…
Fifty Shades Freed begins
quite innocently enough. Ana and
Christian have just gotten married and are on their honeymoon. Just when you think the two have learned a
thing or two from their experiences, think again. Before you can say “Holy crap!” (one of Ana’s favorite phrases),
they’re back to their old ways. I still
can’t decide whether Ana is an exibitionist in denial, just plain stupid, or
really does things to provoke Christian, but she actually “forgets” she’s now
the wife of a well-known (supposedly respectable) multi-billionaire and dozes
off on a beach with her breasts fully exposed for the paparazzi’s photo-taking
pleasure. As expected, this show of
breasts infuriates Christian. Ana tries
to appease Christian by acting like a submissive little girl. And off they go, having round after round
after round of Make-Up Sex. Ho-hum.
Ana (half-heartedly) tries to resist the new changes that
have been brought about by marrying Christian.
She bitches about the quantity of hickeys Christian gave her during one
of their sex sessions, hickeys which are only visible to her, and yet she
hardly raises an objection when she dresses up in the new duds Christian bought
for her, which are actually the visible marks of his territorial
branding --- her expensive designer dresses, her Manolo Blahniks … which makes
me think, do I smell a hypocrite here?
She protests being made the new editor of the publishing house that
Christian bought for her, and yet she doesn’t resign. She refuses to take on her married name, and yet doesn’t throw a
fit when Christian tells her, “You.
Are. Mine.”
I. Want. To. Vomit.
I. Am. So. Disgusted. What.
A. Chauvinist. Pig.
Amid her half-hearted protests,
Ana slowly accepts the opulent lifestyle that comes with marrying Christian. She discards her sneakers and puts on her
Manolo Blahniks, gets rid of her sweats and jeans and dons low-back
mini-dresses … she even acquires a new persona, that of the acid-tongued,
assertive, territorial rich bitch, which she puts on display when someone makes
the moves on her man. Meanwhile,
Christian has gone back to his obsessive, territorial, control freak ways, and
his reaction to Ana’s pregnancy is SO ABOMINABLE that whatever sympathy you
might have felt for him in Fifty Shades Darker is lost as quickly as his
pecker shoots out sperm. But, if you
really want to be pissed off, just read on to find out how Ana reacts to
Christian. I’m sure you’d want to drop
a piano on both of them afterwards… and yeah, drop a piano on that annoying
inner goddess of Ana’s, too!
But, we all know this is a
fantasy, and so everything gets resolved in the end. Christian becomes Ana’s Perfect Man once again, and they live
happily ever-after. Again, I go, ho-hum.
If you’re looking forward to more, to use Ana’s term,
“kinky fuckery,” then you might be a bit disappointed in this book, for while
the sex scenes are still numerous, they’re not as “kinky” as the ones EL James
wrote about in the last two books. In
fact, they’re almost vanilla-tame … except for a few sexcapades here and there,
like the one that involved a butt-plug, which I found pretty hilarious. Can you imagine your just-used sex toy (in
this case, a butt plug), going back to its previous home … a BOWL, of all
things, which stands in full view of humanity?
Imagine having a guest come to your home and offering him some pica-pica. “Have some adobong mani!” you say.
And your guest reaches in by mistake for that bowl instead and
realizes it’s not adobong mani he’s munching on… have you vomited yet?
It appears that EL James finally
lost steam in this book, for other than the numerous sex scenes and fights
between Ana and Christian, hardly anything exciting or substantial takes
place. Much of it seems like filler
material, and even the action-packed scenes (yes, there are those in this
installment) seem forced. There’s
hardly any development, and so these surprising twists and turns remain just
that … surprising. When I finally
finished reading the last page of the book, I didn’t go, Hooray! for Ana
and Christian. I went, Finally, I’m
free of this damned book!
Even the epilogue of sorts, 50
Shades of Christian, feels like a filler to satisfy the required word count
… although, to be honest, this is probably the best part of the
book. Yes, folks, in my opinion, the
book is THAT BAD. Such a shame, really,
for the second one was really very promising.
As long as the female readers of
this book realize that this book is a fantasy, like the other two books in the Fifty
Shades trilogy, then there’s no problem.
No harm in indulging in fantasies from time to time. What woman wouldn’t want to have it “ALL” in
one package? A gorgeous, rich, smart,
witty, piano-playing, intellectual, well-read Renaissance man who can be as
refined as British royalty, or as sweaty and foul-mouthed as a porn star, who
can give you everything you want without having to pay for it --- clothes,
shoes, gadgets, a car, multiple orgasms that can make you scream, gorgeous
babies … But the female readers must also keep in mind that relationship issues
can’t be solved through sex, or material gifts, or sticking to one’s ideal of
the “Perfect” Man, no matter how earth-shaking they seem to be. That only happens in Ana and Christian’s
world, never in Real Life. And no
amount of screaming orgasms, branded shoes and clothes, gifts and positions can
compensate for a man’s abuse of a woman, and it doesn’t matter how Perfect he
appears to be.
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