Fifty Shades of Grey: The #1 Sunday Times bestseller

E L James

Mar 2012 · Fifty Shades Book 1 · Random House

About this ebook

**A gorgeous special anniversary edition hardcover with a foreword from E L James.**

'And in this quiet moment as I close my eyes, spent and sated, I think I'm in the eye of the storm. And in spite of all he's said, and what he hasn't said, I don't think I have ever been so happy. . .'

When literature student Anastasia Steele goes to interview young entrepreneur Christian Grey, she encounters a man who is beautiful, brilliant, and intimidating. The unworldly, innocent Ana is startled to realize she wants this man and, despite his enigmatic reserve, finds she is desperate to get close to him. Unable to resist Ana's quiet beauty, wit, and independent spirit, Grey admits he wants her too - but on his own terms.

Shocked yet thrilled by Grey's singular erotic tastes, Ana hesitates. For all the trappings of success - his multinational businesses, his vast wealth, his loving family - Grey is a man tormented by demons and consumed by the need to control. When the couple embarks on a daring, passionately physical affair, Ana discovers Christian Grey's secrets and explores her own dark desires.

- An Instant Worldwide Bestseller
- More than 165 Million Copies Sold Worldwide
- The bestselling romance of all time

**This beautiful hardcover edition includes navy sprayed edges, navy matte cover with silver foil, silk ribbon bookmark, custom end sheets, and new additional content.**

This book is intended for mature audiences.

Ratings and reviews

Okay. First things first - Fifty Shades of Grey is one of the worst things I've ever read. Including Twilight. Honestly I can't imagine why anyone would pick this up - I don't even know why I picked it up. There is NO plotline at all, and while it seemed as though James was building something up towards the end, it was destroyed by badly written BDSM.

How anyone could read this book without feeling sick to their stomach is beyond me. Christian stalks Ana, twice, I don't remember that being legal. He rapes her three times, one time he used alcohol to sway her consent which goes, by law, as rape, in one incident she clearly states 'no' yet Christian has sex with her anyway. The final account of sexual assault is when Ana says the safe word and Christian ignores it, the consent as been retracted, as there is no longer consent, that is rape. Shameful.

Read the first couple of chapters and its really starting to wear on me how much Ana blushes around him and how incoherent she becomes that I'm starting to second think about continuing. With that style of writing throughout I really don't want to bother finishing it else it'll just annoy the hell out of me. Over use of words and over doing the characters reactions. Ana sounds more like a teenager than a legal adult, its mildly annoying that the author has uses this style of writing.

About the author

E L James is an incurable romantic and a self-confessed fangirl. After twenty-five years of working in television, she decided to pursue a childhood dream and write stories that readers could take to their hearts. The result was the controversial and sensuous romance Fifty Shades of Grey and its two sequels, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed. In 2015, she published the #1 bestseller Grey, the story of Fifty Shades of Grey from the perspective of Christian Grey, and in 2017, the chart-topping Darker, the second part of the Fifty Shades story from Christian's point of view. She followed with the #1 Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller, The Mister in 2019. Her books have been published in fifty languages and have sold more than 165 million copies worldwide.

E L James has been recognized as one of Time magazine's "Most Influential People in the World" and Publishers Weekly's "Person of the Year." Fifty Shades of Grey stayed on The New York Times bestseller list for 133 consecutive weeks. Fifty Shades Freed won the Goodreads Choice Award (2012), and Fifty Shades of Grey was selected as one of the 100 Great Reads, as voted by readers, in PBS's The Great American Read (2018). Darker was long-listed for the 2019 International DUBLIN Literary Award.

She was a producer on each of the three Fifty Shades movies, which made more than a billion dollars at the box office. The third instalment, Fifty Shades Freed, won the People's Choice Award for Drama in 2018. E L James is blessed with two wonderful sons and lives with her husband, the novelist and screenwriter Niall Leonard, and their West Highland terriers in the leafy suburbs of West London.