Warning: there is mention of child sexual abuse in this chapter.

For someone who said “Shit! It’s my mother” at the end of the last chapter, Grey sure is giddy over having Ana meet her now. 

Something like this shows off the fanfiction origins of the book in a painful way.  A lot of people who write fanfiction will want to have a cliffhanger at the end of every chapter, because it could be days, weeks, or months before the next one.  There has to be a hook there to keep the reader waiting for more, so that they’ll stay invested until the next installment.  When this was a fanfic, potential drama with Mrs. Grey probably counted as a decent hook, and the attitude switch probably went unnoticed because of the time lapse.  As a book, though?  Books don’t need a cliffhanger between chapters, because we’ve got the next chapter right there already.  We can see, right away, the total shift in Grey’s attitude, and it sticks out like a sore thumb.

(Granted, you do need tension to keep readers in a book, but it’s not so heavily focused on moving them from chapter to chapter.  More from scene to scene or from act to act.)

Grey unties her and they spend a few minutes thinking that the marks on her wrists are uber sexy.  They can be, yes, but is that really the right reaction in this situation?  1) His mother is right outside, and he wants to keep his kink a secret.  They’re going to have to hide that, which won’t be easy unless she can find some really long sleeves.  2) It’s the first time she’s been tied.  She can find marks to be sexy, but I would expect…I don’t know, some wonderment at the fact that she finds it sexy, or some confusion, or something to go along with the ‘it’s sexy’ reaction.

Ana doesn’t really want to meet Mrs. Grey, because she is embarrassed.  Grey doesn’t give her an option.  Well, I guess he does technically give her an option.

“I will expect you in that room in five minutes, otherwise I’ll come and drag you out of here myself in whatever you’re wearing.”

Fucking Bluebeard.  This right here?  This has nothing to do with their ‘arrangement,’ which said nothing about him being able to force her into embarrassing, uncomfortable situations.  I’m not even sure this has to do with his control issues.  This is just Grey being such an utter ass that I want to shove him out his 20 story window.  I’m going to go ahead and lay bets that this book never acknowledges the difference between “follow the rules set out on this piece of paper, because we both find that fun” and “haha bitch, now I control every part of your life, even the parts we didn’t write down.”

Perhaps meeting her will help put a little part of the jigsaw in place. Might help me understand why Christian is the way he is…

If his mother turned him into Bluebeard, I don’t think I’d want to meet her.

Mrs. Grey – Oh, I’m sorry, Dr. Grace Trevelyan-Grey – is just as beautiful as her adopted son, and Ana once again negatively compares herself to another woman’s looks and ’dies a little inside’.  She’s not even trying to value anything besides looks, both her looks and Dr. Grey’s looks.

Dr. Grey is also nice and polite, and Ana says exactly four words, letting Grey do the actual question answering.  Then her phone rings and she flees so she can answer it. 

It’s Jose, wanting to apologize.  Of course, that sounds pretty insincere when he immediately jumps to jealous supposition after she says she can’t talk.  “Are you with him?”

Naturally, Ana doesn’t say anything along the lines of “No, you rapist, leave me alone” or “I know it was a mistake but it was awful and I need time so back off.”  She doesn’t even think it.  She’s just mildly put off by the fact that he’s bugging her.

Well, enough of that incredibly brief interlude, let’s go back to the Greys.  Why did this scene have to be interrupted?  No, really, why?  Especially since, as soon as Ana goes back, it’s just to see that Dr. Grey is leaving.  My god, it’s like a compressed version of chapter two, where the book just runs around checking off boxes.  “Meet the mother.”  “Check.”  “Oh, remind everyone that Jose still has a subplot.”  “Check.”  Nothing gets accomplished, the book just throws shit at us and then runs on to the next thing.

Apparently Taylor lives in the house as well.  Considering the ‘house’ is really a 20-story build with a helipad on top, that doesn’t mean much.  (Is it an office building?  A condo that he owns the top few floors of?  A 20 story tall house?  Fuck all if I know, because our narrator doesn’t bother to find shit out.)

“Mr. Grey, there’s an issue with the Darfur shipment.”

Christian nods curtly at him.

[A mere 30 words, in which Taylor leaves and Ana asks a question.]

“Yes.” His tone is clipped. What is his problem?

His problem is that there’s an issue with the Darfur shipment.  PAY ATTENTION.  Seriously, how are you so dense that you don’t remember something that was said LESS THAN A MINUTE AGO?

He does a bit of business on the phone, and it’s all vague and mysterious, so I’m sure it’ll show up again later and be a big deal.  Then he gives her a folder with the contract and tells her to go over it. 

Alright, more knowledgeable commenters.  I know what my reaction to this is, but is it a personal thing?  Are there some people that are okay with being handed a fully-formed contract to edit, instead of sitting down with someone to build said contract together?  Like with everything that Grey has done during this ‘negotiation,’ it strikes me as being very imbalanced.  He’s not ever offering to build a fantasy with her, he’s just coming to her and saying “This is what we’re going to do.  Period.  This is what I want, and because I’m the Dom, what I want matters.”  He’s giving her a chance to object, but he’s not giving her a chance to suggest.  She’s not, at any point, allowed to say “I want to do this particular thing here, let’s put it in the contract.”  All she’s allowed to do is take shit out, and then only if she fights for it.

The more I think about it, the more disturbed I am.  Nothing about this contract situation is geared to be for Ana’s pleasure.  Nothing about it is specifically supposed to make Ana happy.  The only happiness she’s allowed to have is after she does what Grey wants.  And that’s just not how BDSM works.  The entire process is supposed to be fun for both parties.  Furthermore, it’s pretty horrifying for women in general, this idea that our happiness has to be dependent on how well we please the menfolk.  Ana has no agency and barely any opinion on what she wants to do; she’s just totally dependent on Grey.

On top of all that, he suggests that Ana ‘do some research’ on the internet, instead of telling her what she needs to know himself.  1) The internet is a very useful tool, but there’s also a lot of shit on there, and he has no way of knowing if Ana is going to find a useful BDSM site, or some barely disguised porn site.  (Or whatever site this author found, which clearly must have left out some vital info.)  2) Even if she finds a good, informative site, BDSM is a very personal thing.  A website is not going to tell her how Grey practices BDSM, the quirks and preferences that are unique to him.  Not everyone is the same.  He really should not be tossing her out without any direction.  It’s almost like he wants her to get bad information, so that when she inevitably fucks up later, he can say it’s all her own fault.

Ana doesn’t have a computer.  How the hell did she get through college without a computer?  You know what, I guess it’s possible, if the school has public computers for students to use, and she spends a lot of time in the library.  But if that’s the case, then going to a public computer or borrowing a computer should be automatic to her.  So why is she stressing out about how she’ll have to borrow Kate’s computer?  She treats it like it’s some big stumbling block to doing research, when really, she should have a system in place already.

Okay, the real answer to ‘why’ is ‘so that Grey can give her a new one all her own and show off how awesome he is.’ 

Ana mentions she needs to make a phone call, and Grey assumes she means Jose.  He gets crazy jealous in a flash and tells her he doesn’t like to share.  She could have been wanting to call anyone.  There’s no need to assume it was Jose.  In fact, she wanted to call Kate.  He is either so jealous that he can’t stand her having friends that aren’t him, or he’s so paranoid that he thinks every one of her ‘friends’ is secretly going to have an affair with her.

I want to call after him, but his sudden aloofness has left me paralyzed. What happened to the generous, relaxed, smiling man who was making love to me not half an hour ago?

GET THE FUCK OUT.  No, seriously, right now.  If your new partner exhibits such severe mood swings that you are paralyzed and can’t tell what little random comment will set him off, that’s dangerous.  That’s “on the list of signs you’re dating a spousal abuser” bad.

It’s perfectly natural that I should talk to someone – and I can’t talk to him if he is so open one minute and so standoffish the next.

I honestly don’t know if there’s anything else I can scream about this without just repeating myself.  It’s like she’s recognizing all these bad things about him, but stopping just short of admitting that they are bad things about him.

Grey finally, grudgingly, allows her to talk to Kate about sex, as long as she doesn’t tell Elliot.

“The sooner I have your submission the better, and we can stop all this,” he murmurs.

“Stop all what?”

“You, defying me.”

I have to go break things.  …  FUCK YOU, BLUEBEARD.  Signing a contract with someone doesn’t mean the sub looses all right to protest, especially when it comes to things that are a huge fucking deal, like being cut off from outside emotional support.  And in a proper arrangement, that’s an issue that should only come up accidently.  Even excepting that, she’s not ‘defying’ him at all.  If anything, she’s being a doormat, because she’s actually asking him permission to talk to her best friend.

He even puts in a caveat that she can only talk about the sex they’ve had, not the kink that they’re going to do.  If all Ana’s questions are about ‘sex in general’ and not ‘kinky sex,’ then why would she have to ask about it in relation to Grey at all?  Did she really sign an NDA that says she can’t ask generalized questions about sex?  We’ll never know, because she didn’t read it!

Grey drives her home in a sports car, so at least he’s showing off his money.  It’s an Audi again.  Does this book realize that there’s more than one brand of high-end car out there?

He places his bag in the space behind our seats…

There is no space behind the seats.  No, really.  See those seats?  See how they are flush with the back of the cabin?  My parents have a car like that.  Much cheaper and older, but with the same seat arrangement.  If they bring more than a newspaper and a cup of coffee with them in the car, it has to go in the trunk.  RESEARCH IS YOUR FRIEND.

There’s more brandname dropping, and it’s just as juvenile as ever.

Grey stops for lunch, walking all over her protests that she’s not hungry.  Then he orders wine for them to drink, again ignoring that she wanted a diet Coke.  Apparently he thinks Ana is too stupid to know what she wants.  Maybe that’s why he went about the contract business the way he did.

Grey mentions that his mom likes her, because his mom thought he was gay.  No hint of any suggestion that she liked Ana for herself, just for the fact that she proves her son isn’t a poof.  Don’t you just love it when homophobia worms its way into stories like this?  Why can’t she be glad that Ana proves Grey isn’t a workaholic with no social life, or be glad that Grey said “I like this girl enough to let her stay the night” and anything that makes her precious son happy is a good thing?  There’s so many reasons why Dr. Grey might like Ana just for here existence, and this book really felt like it had to go with the bigoted one?

Apparently Grey has had fifteen sexual partners before Ana, and Dr. Grey knew about none of them. 

Grey mentions that he’s never had vanilla sex before, and we get what the book clearly thinks is a clever line as Ana compares what they did to various flavors.  Then she asks why he’s never had vanilla sex before, and he quite casually mentions that he was raped by his mother’s friend at the age of fifteen.

Oh, no, wait.  He was ‘seduced.’

WHY IS THIS BOOK SO FUCKING BAD?

Look, a fifteen-year-old does not get ‘seduced’ by a fully-grown woman.  He gets child-raped.  Consent cannot be given by someone who is under 18 (Edit: 16 to 18, depending on the state, and 16 in Washington.  Never 15, though).  That’s the law.  If one party is fifteen, and the other party is old enough to be his mother, it’s child rape.  Full stop.  Do not pass go.  Do not collect 200 dollars.

Both parties continue to treat this child rape as if it’s a mere curiosity, even after Grey says he was her ‘submissive’ for six years.  (No, no, no, fuck you book, a fifteen-year-old does not ‘submit’ to a 40+ year-old.  He gets raped by her.)

This is every bit as bad as what Grey is doing to Ana.  I know there are some fans of the book who will want to say that this counts as an ‘excuse’ for why he’s so fucked up with how he handles contracts and consent, but it doesn’t.  1) The book isn’t even treating it as fucked up.  2) Two fucked up things don’t cancel each other out.  They just make the book twice as fucked up.

“So you never dated anyone at college?”

“No.” He shakes his head to emphasize the point.

…

“I didn’t want to. She was all I wanted, needed. And besides, she’d have beaten the shit out of me.” He smiles fondly at the memory.

I honestly don’t know what I should say.  Should I go along with the book’s view that this isn’t all incredibly creepy?  Because in that case, hello, he wouldn’t have dating anyone in college because he was already dating someone.  A six-year-long relationship is a really long one, and it has to have some merit for both sides in order to last. 

Then again, if I go with the HOLY FUCK, SHE RAPED HIM, THE MENTAL REPERCUSSIONS OF THAT DON’T STOP AT 18 line of logic, then…just no, that’s fucking creepy and controlling and absolutely fucking horrifying and why doesn’t Ana say anything about how terrible it is?

There is no interpretation of this scene that doesn’t end in the words “Why is this book so bad?”

Oh, great, and he’s still ‘good friends’ with his rapist.

Ana is reeling from this ‘revelation,’ but only the part where Grey was submissive, not the part where he was child-raped.  For some reason, this is a huge deal.  Because people can only ever be one thing or the other, and can’t be swingers switches (oops), I guess.  After all, whether you top or bottom is hardwired in with the rest of your personality and isn’t just a sexual preference and that’s it.  Oh, wait, except for the fact that it totally is.  And if Grey were any good at explaining shit and reassuring her that kink is okay and not something only freaks would do, she would know that.

Every single little bit of the BDSM in this book is just so wrong on multiple levels.  I’d almost say it has to be intentional to get this nuanced a level of wrong.  One would assume that a truly ignorant person would at least stumble across something right by accident by now.  Instead we get a very creepy character who apparently wants girls to be afraid of sex with him and then has sex anyway.

Finally Ana admits that he was raped.  In a throw-away line that goes nowhere.  She goes right from that to thinking about him being a submissive again.

There is only one conclusion I can draw here: this book wants us to think that being a submissive is the same as sexual abuse.  Ana is, quite literally, equating the two things in her mind and treating them as equally shocking.  There are no words for how horrifyingly offensive this is.  Oh, not just to BDSM practitioners.  To victims of abuse as well.  It’s calling kinksters horrible monsters for engaging in consensual sex that’s outside the norm, but it’s also sapping a lot of the horror out of actual sexual abuse and rape and trying to romanticize it.

Is there anyone, anywhere that this book doesn’t go out of its way to offend?  So far we’ve got ethnic minorities, gays, virgins, child abuse victims, and real-life BDSM followers.  And we’re barely a third of the way through.

“Is this what our err… relationship will be like?” I whisper. “You, ordering me around?” I can’t quite bring myself to look at him.

“Yes,” he murmurs.

“I see.”

“And what’s more, you’ll want me to,” he adds, his voice low.

I sincerely doubt that.

Then don’t do it.  No, really, if you doubt that you’ll enjoy it, don’t agree to it.  WHY THE FUCK IS THIS SUCH A HARD CONCEPT FOR YOU, ANA?

Oh, I just realized something really disheartening.

Grey keeps assuring her that she’ll enjoy it, regardless of her current feelings.  And Ana is going to go along with it, regardless of her current feelings.  Is this book trying to tell us that all women, secretly, deep down, want to be submissives?  Is it ignoring the fact that being a sub is very personal preference that not everyone shares in, and that’s okay?  The text really is treating her disinterest in kink as if it’s a passing thing that will eventually go away, instead of as a perfectly valid way to feel.  And Grey, being the horrible person that he is, keeps acting like he can make her like something, rather than admitting that she has to be disposed to like it in the first place.

I mean, just look at those words.  “You’ll want me to,” instead of “Don’t you want me to?”

“What happened to the fifteen?” I blurt.

He raises his eyebrows in surprise, then looks resigned, shaking his head.

“Various things, but it boils down to,” he pauses, struggling to find the words I think. “Incompatibility.” He shrugs.

Their bodies are in a basement in his castle.

“No, Anastasia, I’m not. I am monogamous in my relationships.”

Oh… this is news.

Apparently we have moved on without comment from the earlier “this isn’t a relationship” idea.  But this wouldn’t be ‘news’ if what they have had been treated as a relationship from the start.  She shouldn’t be surprised that it’s entirely possible to be monogamous while in such an arrangement.  Grey should have told her as much.

Considering how utterly horrible he is at explaining this kind of stuff, I’m really curious about how he got fifteen partners before now.

Finally, that god awful lunch is over and Grey takes her the rest of the way home.

Kate is home and practically leaps at Ana as she walks in the door, demanding to know what happened.  Despite all that drama over getting permission to talk about sex with Kate, Ana now doesn’t want to talk about sex with Kate.  Apparently, she dances to the tune of ‘whatever makes the most drama in this scene.’

They talk a little about sex, and Kate admits that her first time was horrible, but in the normal teenager kind of horrible. 

My inner goddess sits in the lotus position looking serene except for the sly, self-congratulatory smile on her face.

No, really, what the fuck does this even mean.  I can get the sly smile, to signify that she’s feeling superior that she orgasmed her first time out the gate when Kate didn’t.  But why such an involved image?  Does Ana really walk around imagining various parts of her personality as fully-formed, autonomous entities?  While her inner goddess is sitting in the lotus, is her inner child playing with alphabet blocks in a corner?  Is her inner-subconscious attempting to get black-out drunk?  Is her inner-thespian reading lines with her inner-teenager, while her inner-wild side reads a motorcycle magazine?

Ana admits to Kate that she’s nervous about going forward with Grey, but can’t give a good answer, and just says it’s because he’s so different from her.  Kate things she’s just being her usual depreciatory self and tells Ana to stop it.

I must remember to Google ‘penalties for breaching a non-disclosure agreement’ while I’m doing the rest of my ‘research’.

If you’d read the god damn thing before signing it, this wouldn’t be an issue.

Ana asks Kate to tell her about Elliot.  Kate gets all blushing-innocent over the subject.

“He’s just so… Everything. And when we… oh… really good.”

Well.  That was helpful.  I guess the book doesn’t want to put in the work of giving tertiary characters an actual personality.

Ana got some letters while she was gone, informing her that she has two internship interviews.  Kate already has an internship secured because her father ‘knows a guy who knows a guy.’  So I guess we’re going to throw in the idea that rich people never do any work, their money just opens doors for them, while the middle-class hero gets everything by slaving for it.  Except for the fact that Kate had to work like a dog for the interview that kicked off this plot.

Yeah, I know, the wealthy do often abuse their power and money.  It sucks when it happens and deserves to be criticized.  But can’t we reserve criticism for the times when it actually happens?  I mean, we’ve been told over and over that Kate is a hard worker and good at what she does.  On top of that, it’s not really a bad thing to give your own kid a leg up in the world.  I’ve gotten plenty of really cool things just because my friends ‘know a guy that knows a guy’ and set me up with an interview or a slot in some really cool training or even just a point of contact so I could go and get stuff myself.  It’s not a bad thing, and it’s not even an abuse of power.  Now, if Kate were a lazy slacker who never did any work and her dad paid people off to keep her as an editor at the school paper, that would be an abuse.  But a father just helping his daughter?  Not so much.

Seems Kate is going on a two-week family vacation after graduation.  I’m bored by Ana’s angst over the fact that she doesn’t get to travel.  I’m even more bored, because I’ve driven all up and down the west coast, and there are some incredibly gorgeous spots that are less than a day’s drive from her.  Yet Ana never makes any mention of exploring her own corner of the world.  So it comes off as very entitled when she whines about how she never gets to go anywhere, when what she really means is she never gets to go to any of the stereotypical tourist traps.  If she actually did travel as much as she could but wanted to go even further, that would work.  But this?  She’s just whining.

Jose calls and begs for forgiveness again.

“Of course, I forgive you José. Just don’t do it again. You know I don’t feel like that about you.”

Well…how anticlimactic.  Why was this even a thing?  I mean, fine, a person can forgive in this situation and that’s not wrong.  I mean from a story-telling standpoint.  It takes all the tension out of the whole subplot.  There’s no conflict anymore.  He made his move, she rejected him, she forgave him, the end.  Anything that might have made this a point of tension is gone now.  If he had never kissed her and she was constantly worried about him making a move and how to bring up the issue of his crush?  That would have been tension.  (Well, for a romance book, anyway.)  Jose whines about more about how she’s with Grey now, and she says she’ll meet him the following day.

Ana and Kate have a normal, relaxing evening, and Ana goes on for a while about how nice it is to be normal and not in the middle of ‘madness.’  This is doing nothing to convince me that Ana should be getting into sexy kinky times with Grey.  I have nothing against someone enjoying a relaxing day after a very intense day, but she specifically compares the two and puts ‘normal’ as good and ‘kinky’ as well, I guess not ‘bad,’ but certainly not ‘also good.’

It just can’t be about sex, can it? I recall his gentle banter this morning at breakfast, his joy at my delight with the helicopter ride, him playing the piano – the sweet soulful oh-so-sad music.

These are all good points to bring up and actually would give us some non-physical things to base a relationship on.  Except for the fact that he was a controlling asshole at breakfast, I don’t remember any joy or delight in the heli scene, and we never get any honest comment on his personality from the piano scene.  Also, the fact that he’s a fucking horrible person kind of outshines all the rest here.

“some evil Mrs. Robinson figure…”

So when a woman is the Dom, she’s evil.  When a man is the Dom, he’s just confusing, sexy, and broken on the inside.  Fuck you, book.  Fuck you to hell.  I would be willing to give you this one, if only you didn’t treat his sexual abuse as if it were what BDSM actually is.

Finally, Ana goes to bed.

Either these chapters are getting longer, these chapters are getting worse, or I’m getting pickier, because this one took me forever.