Fifty Shades Darker, the second book in the “Fifty Shades” trilogy, could have been about fifty pages (maybe more) shorter. I get that it’s sort-of erotica that’s trying to still have a story line. But really, it’s OK to go more than three pages (or what felt like only three pages) without yet another tryst. Seriously. How do these people get anything done?

But before I rant more, let me talk about what I liked in this one. Christian opens up more. Ana gets a bit of a backbone. Their relationship progresses on a mental and emotional, not just physical level. I Christian was more human, more authentic in this book. For all of his flaws, he does love Ana, and she loves him.  And although Christian is more controlling than I would be comfortable with in a relationship, it seems to work for them.I’m still interested enough to see how things end in the final book.

BUT….

Frankly, I was bored in this one.   It truly did feel like Ana and Christian were jumping into bed every third page.  It got redundant after a while. Ana’s constant “Jeez” got on my nerves.  And I finally figured out what bugs me about Christian.  It’s the same way  I felt about Edward in the Twilight books.  Christian is too damn controlling.  It’s ridiculous how he yells at Ana while she’s driving, how he gets mad every time she even speaks to another man, even though she is with Christian and it is obvious NOTHING is going on with the other guy.  It stifled me just reading it.

And, Ana’s constant worry that when she speaks her mind, Christian is going to be mad. That’s not healthy.  I was glad to see Christian break out of his self-loathing (more or less) but the change felt rather sudden to me.  I suppose that’s the beauty of fiction- you can suspend reality within a story if you need to.  Now, without being too spoiler-y, I felt like the end of Fifty Shades Darker is a complete plot contrivance that won’t really drive Christian and Ana’s relationship forward, but was added to build up some drama or action that is really secondary to the story (and I will freely admit if I am wrong when I read book 3).

This one was a much slower read for me than Fifty Shades of Grey.  We’ll see how things end up in the final book.