Ana wakes up and notices that not only is Grey still pretty, he also smells pretty.  She tries to touch his chest, but he makes her stop.

“Why don’t you like to be touched?” I whisper, staring up into soft gray eyes.

“Because I’m fifty shades of fucked-up, Anastasia.”

Am I just jaded?  Because this doesn’t strike me as being exceptionally clever or punny.  It’s the first time anyone has said it in the book so far, and it feels…mostly out of nowhere.  Like Grey just said it for the sake of the title.  It doesn’t sound nearly like his normal speech.

Ana talks about how she wants to hear more about his ‘tough introduction to life,’ but…I don’t know.  Maybe I’m just a horrible person.  Still, it seems to me like any tension or mystery from that plot has been totally destroyed.  We know Grey was adopted at age four, we know his Cullen-esque family didn’t do the abuse, so the only thing left to discover is the details of his ‘tough introduction to life.’  And I just am really not that interested in finding out the exact flavor of abuse he suffered.  It just doesn’t constitute a plot at this point.  It sucks, and I’m sure there’s a world of difference to the victims between one type of abuse and another.  But to the reader?  In this book?  Is anyone really sitting around and biting their nails waiting to find out if he was hit with a beer bottle or locked under the stairs?

Grey mentions that she needs to start contraception, because he doesn’t like condoms.  Then he agrees to get her a doctor, because she doesn’t have one.  They’ll arrange for the doctor to meet her at Grey’s house because…um, this doctor only makes housecalls?  I don’t know.

“Did you get me tipsy on purpose?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because you over-think everything, and you’re reticent like your stepdad. A drop of wine in you and you start talking, and I need you to communicate honestly with me. Otherwise you clam up, and I have no idea what you’re thinking. In vino veritas, Anastasia.”

UHG, every time, this just makes me a little more murderous.  First, over-thinking in this case is probably a good thing.  Well, it’s closer to good than under-thinking would be.  Second, drunk-talking is not honest-talking.  Third, if she’s reticent, you need to find an honest way to get her to talk.  I am reticent.  You can’t tell because I keep writing these huge chapter reviews, right?  Well, guess what, I open up like a biddy when I write.  There have been times where I would send someone out of the room and text them, because that was the only way for me to get the words out.  Emails, IMs, hell, even phone conversations.  All come easier to me than face-to-face talking.  Once the ice is broken, I can go back to in-person, but yeah.  Point of the story: if someone has trouble talking about a subject, you need to find a way to make them comfortable, and that way needs to involve everyone staying sober.

Grey says that he’ll have the revised contract for her on Sunday, at which point he wants to do a scene with her.  She asks if she can draw things out and get more ‘vanilla’ sex from him by not signing.  Then have a super creepy exchange where they ‘joke’ about how Grey will ‘crack’ under the ‘strain’ of not being allowed to fuck her kinkily enough.  At which point, naturally, he’ll just ‘have’ to kidnap her and force her into doing it.

Because blue balls can totally kill a guy.  My brother’s neighbor’s dog’s petsitter’s cousin totally died from it, you know.  That’s why Grey has rape her instead of just move on and find someone who is actually willing to do BDSM.

To be fair, if these two were anywhere near a healthy couple, the joke could have been cute and flirty.  But when a rapist jokes about raping you, it’s probably not really a joke.

She rolls her eyes at him in the middle of this sarcasm fest, and earlier he said he would spank her if she did that again.  So now he’s going to spank her.  He won’t scene with her until she signs the paperwork, but he will bend her over and spank her.  Okay, I know that you don’t need to sign paperwork for every single little thing you do.  I really do get that.  But I also know that you don’t have sign paperwork for every big thing you do, and he earlier said he wouldn’t ‘scene’ with her unless she signed.  So I’m really wondering where this contract stands in Grey’s mind.  She already verbally agreed, so how much weight does he give to signing the thing?  Sometimes he treats it like a legally binding document that has to be signed to have weight, and sometimes…well, sometimes he just goes off and does his own thing.

Ana is terrified of being spanked.  Okay, not a fun thing if you don’t like it, but the girl is paralyzed with fear.  I’m torn between telling her that it’s not that bad and telling her that if she’s that scared, she needs to get out of this deal.  Not that she’d listen to me.

She goes over to him and he holds her down while he spanks her 18 times.  Ana doesn’t like it.  At all.  She goes on and on the whole time about how she’s scared and it hurts.  Is this what women fantasize about when they swoon over Christian Grey?  Being afraid of their sexual partner?  I don’t mind that she thinks it’s painful, it’s the scared part that just really creeps me out.  The total lack of ‘wow this is so hot’ is also worrying, if only because it’s been all over the other sex scenes, so the absence in this one is quite telling.

He then fucks her from behind, and that’s when we get the ‘oh this is so hot’ talk again. 

my traitorous body explodes in an intense, body-shattering orgasm.

Traitorous body.  As in, her body was defying her brain by enjoying the sex.  Why did her brain not want to like that?  This is the kind of phrase I would expect to hear from a victim, but taken with the context of the scene, it feels more subtle than that.  Like Ana thinks that she shouldn’t enjoy sex, or at least shouldn’t enjoy post-spanking sex, and therefore her body has betrayed her by being kinkier than she wanted it to be.

Which, in turn, is just really confusing.  If she thought that she shouldn’t or couldn’t like this, why the hell did she agree to it?

After, she describes the sex as ‘not so bad.’

Grey goes off to the bathroom, and Ana marvels at how she feels good and how she enjoyed all that.  It’s a hollow assurance to the reader, since we were in her head during the whole thing, and she didn’t enjoy it.  At least, not all of it, and the parts she did enjoy, she apparently didn’t want to.

Ana sees Grey to the door, and he remarks with some surprise that she didn’t cry during the whole thing.  Nothing really wrong with crying in a scene, as that can be brought on by a bunch of different things.  It’s mostly Grey’s reaction here that makes me want to break things.  He expected her to, and he’s pleasantly surprised that she didn’t.  That last bit makes me think that the crying he expected wasn’t any good kind.

I feel lonely and uncomfortable here, unhappy with my own company. Have I strayed so far from who I am? I know that lurking, not very far under my rather numb exterior, is a well of tears.

God, nothing in this book gives any hint that Ana wants BDSM, or that BDSM is even good.  I’m just utterly flabbergasted that so many women find this book erotic when the main character herself is going on about how horrible the whole thing is.  Are the fans of this book turned on by the thought of being forced into something they don’t like?  Or are they turned on by the kink, and they assume that kinksters must hate themselves for giving into such taboo desires, so Ana’s reaction just doesn’t phase them at all?

Ana calls her mom because she’s upset.  Because she can’t tell the truth, she says she’s fallen for someone, but this someone is so different that Ana doesn’t think they have a future.  Ana’s mother advises going slow and getting to know him, to find out if he’s a good person or not.  Nice advice, but far too late.

Is he worthy of me? That’s an interesting concept. I always wonder whether I am worthy of him.

It is an interesting concept.  One that really should be explored.  That is, her crippling self-esteem issues and the way it totally undermines her relationships is an interesting concept, and would make for a good character study if handled with grace.  Grey isn’t worthy of anyone; that’s a boring concept.

Naturally, because this book sucks, that line is promptly forgotten.

Kate arrives home and sees Ana has been crying.  She advises Ana to dump Grey, since she’s been an emotional wreck ever since meeting him.

The world of Katherine Kavanagh is very clear, very black and white. Not the intan­gible, mysterious, vague hues of gray that color my world.

There is nothing mysterious about this.  Really, not one thing.  He’s bad for you.  He makes you cry almost every time you see him.  Nothing he’s done so far has been good for you.  The only time you are even mildly happy is in the middle of sex, and even then, you always seem like your turned on in spite of yourself. 

There really is just no reason at all for her to be in this relationship.  Even though few things ever are, this is a black-and-white issue.

Also, that title will never be clever.

He said it then, and all I could concentrate on at the time was being his. All the warning signs were there, I was just too clueless and too enamored to notice.

The warning signs like that contract you agreed to that mentioned punishment, or the entire conversation you had about pain?  Is it even possible to miss all that?  (She thinks this in regard to the spanking, btw.)  I mean, at this point, he hasn’t given you warnings.  He’s just outright said it. 

There is something seriously wrong with this girl if she can’t even pay attention to something that has taken up most of this book.

I can’t talk this through with Kate without revealing too much, but one question on her day and Kate is off.

Man, Kate’s a really shitty friend.  This isn’t the first time she’s been distracted at the drop of a hat just by the chance to talk about herself.

Ana and Grey banter some more over email and argue about her old car.  He says she can’t drive it even to take it to a garage or sell it.  Apparently he really does think it will spontaneously combust at any second.  He says Taylor will sell it for her.

Then Ana tells him she doesn’t like him, and when he asks why, she says it’s because he never stays with her. 

Naturally this makes Grey rush right over.  Ana cries the whole time until he arrives.  Also, Kate tries to keep him from getting into her room and yells at him about how he makes Ana cry all the time.  So she gets one kudos point back.  But she’s still a shitty friend.  Grey gets into Ana’s room by force anyway, and that makes her stop crying.

“Part of my role is to look after your needs. You said you wanted me to stay, so here I am. And yet I find you like this.” He blinks at me, truly bewildered. “I’m sure I’m respon­sible, but I have no idea why. Is it because I hit you?”

God, he’s so fucking clueless.  Have none of the fifteen previous women wanted a bit of physical comfort after a scene, or do they just skip off to…I don’t know, mope in a corner or write emo poetry or engage in triggering things that I won’t mention for a throw-away joke?

BDSM people are normal people.  They have normal emotional needs, including the need for reassurance and affection.  Granted, everyone has it to varying degrees, but he should not be completely confused about this fact. 

They sit and talk about how the spanking made her feel.  She says she didn’t like it and doesn’t want to do it again.  Grey says she wasn’t supposed to like it.  On the one hand, there is a different between punishment and ‘punishment.’  It can be done to correct a mistake or it can be done just as part of a scene, in which case it’s not really punishment, it’s just called that.  The first one isn’t supposed to be for pure pleasure.  On the other hand, the whole scene has to be weighed and should come out more pleasant than not.  Even if she’s being punished, on some level, she has to enjoy it.  Maybe she can enjoy the thought of having someone control her, or enjoy the behavior she’s being trained to, or just something.

If she straight-up didn’t like anything at all about it, that’s not BDSM.  That’s a doormat and a Bluebeard.

Ana asks Grey why he liked hitting her.

“I like the control it brings me, Anastasia. I want you to behave in a particular way, and if you don’t, I shall punish you, and you will learn to behave the way I desire. I enjoy punishing you. I’ve wanted to spank you since you asked me if I was gay.”

I’m not a Dom and have never wanted to be one, so I can’t comment on how accurate or not any of this is.  All I can say is: Wow, that is so fucking self-centered.  He really does, at every turn, make it all about him, and the sub’s desires be damned.

It also doesn’t really explain much.  I mean, there’s lots of people who like control and want people to behave a certain way, but not all of them would get sexually turned on by spanking everyone who calls them gay.

They spend several pages going on about the fact that he wants to control her, repeating this fact with slightly different wording, never once imparting new information.  It’s really irritating.

“You have no problem being honest with me in print. Your emails always tell me exactly how you feel. Why can’t you do that in conversation? Do I intimidate you that much?”

Finally.  After this observation, Grey suggests that she email him her thoughts on being spanked, since she can’t seem to spit them out.

Then Grey offers to stay the night and they both get in bed and fall asleep.  I think that’s supposed to be a heartwarming turn of events, but it’s Grey, so my heart is not warmed.