Her curiosity oozes through the phone.

There was no editor for this.  None at all.

Kate and Ana talk about Grey showing up at the store.

“I think that is one huge coincidence, Ana. You don’t think he was there to see you?” she speculates.

Okay, this is a huge pet peeve of mine, so I’m going to take a break from awful characters to talk about awful writing.  This is called a ‘said bookism,’ the practice of using some other fanciful word than ‘said’ as a dialogue tag.  When I was in grade school and learning to write, my teachers tried to convince me that beating a thesaurus until all the words came out was a good thing.  They tried to convince me that ‘said’ was a dirty, four-letter word.  They were wrong.

‘Said’ is the only grammatically correct dialogue tag.  Words can only be ‘said.’  They cannot be hissed, shouted, murmured, or whispered.  They can’t even be asked.  Now, we as a reading/writing community have agreed to ignore this very strict rule for the sake of making writing better, but there are limits on how much this rule should be broken.  Generally speaking, one should only used a ‘said bookism’ when the actual words spoken don’t carry the intent of the writer clearly.  If someone gives a witty, defiant line in the face of the villain, but they’re so nervous that they stutter and squeak and can barely be heard?  Alright, fine place for a said bookism.  But putting ‘speculate’ right after someone makes a speculation is not appropriate.  We can very well see that she ‘speculated’ from the words she spoke.  Also, it’s just a damn awkward word to use that way.

Back to the story.  It’s very, very hard to get back to the story when all I want to do is pull out every line of text and mock it individually.

Kate and Ana talk about getting photos of Grey, and Ana mentions that Grey gave her his phone number.  Apparently, this is ‘proof’ that ‘like, totally like-likes her!!!!!1!’  I don’t know, seems more like proof that he agreed to set up for photos.  I think the creepy looks he was giving her in the last chapter count more as proof, and the only thing they prove is that he lusts after her.

But even as I say the words, I know they’re not true – Christian Grey doesn’t do nice.

Ana, you’ve met the guy twice, and he’s not done anything mean.  In fact, he has been pretty nice.  He’s agreed to give you photos when he doesn’t need to (and is supposed to be so busy) and he’s been perfectly polite.  In fact, at this point, the only problem I have with Grey is that lusty vibe from Ch 2 and the fact that Ana will not shut up about him.  She keeps calling him arrogant and mean, but we haven’t seen it at all.  He honestly seems like a nice guy.  So far.

I hug myself with quiet glee…

I had to read that, and so do you.

Back to the story.  Kate suggests they get Jose to do the photos, because apparently the paper only has one photographer, and that guy is out of town.  Look, this is a college paper.  The official paper of that college, not some pet project put on by a small group of people.  They are going to have a huge staff.  In fact, the paper for WSU is called The Daily Evergreen and I couldn’t find any statistics for photographers, but they have seventeen editors, including two photo editors.  If they have two photo editors, they have more than one photographer.  After all, one guy can’t get to every single event that the paper wants to cover.

But no, we need Jose to be in this story somehow, so it’s going to be him.

Paul comes in to remind Ana that they are busy and she should stop chatting on her cell phone.  Then he asks her out.  Because, as we all know, no matter how much she dumps on herself, the protagonist is actually super-hot and wanted by every man, ever.

Paul is cute in a wholesome all-American boy-next-door kind of way, but he’s no literary hero, not by any stretch of the imagination.

And Ana has set impossibly high standards that she makes no attempt to fulfill.  Good thing she got shoved into meeting Grey.  Seriously, who the fuck over the age of thirteen actually admits that they want a ‘literary hero’ and will accept nothing less as a date?  This is a sign of not being able to tell fiction from reality.  Or at least not being able to realize that fiction needs to stay fiction and the people we most love to read about would probably be horrible in real life. 

If she went on a date with Paul and didn’t like him, or if she just said that he wasn’t her type or she didn’t feel any attraction or chemistry, that would be one thing.  But the only reason we’re given is that he’s not perfect to a fantasy level.  Ouch.

Moving on.  Jose doesn’t want to do the photoshoot because he does ‘places,’ not ‘people.’  This is a valid concern.  Photographing people takes an entirely different skill set.  At least, if you want it done right.  A newspaper would want high-grade, professional shots by someone who is experienced at photographing people.

So Kate threatens to not cover his gallery opening if he doesn’t do it.  Ana thinks this makes Kate “awesomely tough,” when really it makes her a bitch.  And a bad newspaper editor on top of that.  (And why don’t they have more staff photographers?!?!  I’m sorry, I’m still stuck on that.)

Kate then bullies Ana into calling Grey without even a hint of acknowledgement about how Ana is nervous.  I take back my comments about wanting Kate to be the hero.  Everyone involved in this is terrible.

Ana calls to set up the photoshoot and imagines him smiling and the ‘wicked gleam’ in his eye.  God, even over the phone I can’t escape these descriptions.

The next morning, Kate travels along to oversee the photoshoot.  Kate, not the photo editor or the assistant photo editor.  Kate is not a picture person.  She’s a words person.  So why the fuck is she there?

For that matter, why is Ana there?

Holy Crap! He’s wearing a white shirt, open at the collar, and grey flannel pants that hang from his hips. His unruly hair is still damp from a shower. My mouth goes dry looking at him… he’s so freaking hot.

This is what you guys are missing when I glance over three pages of Ana/Grey interaction in a single paragraph.  Just pages upon pages of this.  Complete with the ‘holy crap,’ which seems to be Ana’s catchphrase.  At least if she said something other than ‘freaking hot’ every time, I would have material to mock.

Oh, seems Kate is rich, too.  She doesn’t ‘take any crap,’ which in this novel seems to mean she doesn’t practically faint while shaking Grey’s hand.  Um…I’m pretty sure most people would be up to that level of interaction, regardless of how hot Grey’s open shirt is.

They take photos and then afterwards, Grey asks Ana to ‘walk’ with him.  Out in the hallway, he asks her on a date.

I am officially sick of hearing about how awesome Grey looks in Ana’s waffling, inexact, completely vague thoughts that consist of little more than ‘oh my’ and ‘holy crap.’  It was building up before this, but now it’s crossed over into irredeemable. 

Ana agrees to coffee, but has to switch cars with Kate so that Kate can take Jose, his assistant, and his stuff home.  Kate thinks that Grey is ‘dangerous to someone like [Ana],’ even though, still, we have seen nothing to suggest that from Grey’s actions.  I know he’s going to turn horrible just because this book is what it is, but so far, the only reason I hate him is that he makes Ana infinitely more annoying.

Ana and Grey go off-site for the coffee, even though they did this photoshoot in his hotel.  This hotel, which has the Tea Court Lounge, which serves coffee and afternoon tea.  They look to be quite high-end and snazzy.  Instead they go to Portland Coffee House, which may or may not be a real place that’s been shut down.  When it was open, looked like no better than a Starbucks, though. 

I’m already hating this book, so I’m going to go ahead and assume this means Grey is subtly insulting her by taking her to run-of-the-mill coffee, when he could have taken her to Awesome Coffee.

At the coffee house, Ana gets Twinings English Breakfast tea.  Okay, I know I’m probably spending way too much time on this, but I love tea.  Twinings is decent, but I bet they had some actually good stuff the Tea Court Lounge.

They spend two pages establishing that Ana does not have a boyfriend.

“The only people who use my given name are my family and a few close friends. That’s the way I like it.”

Oh. He still hasn’t said, ‘Call me Christian.’ He is a control freak, there’s no other explanation…

Um, no.  There’s a hell of a lot of explanations for that, including the one he just gave you.  In fact, ‘control freak’ is about the least likely explanation there is for wanting to be called by one’s last name.

Grey pries into Ana’s family history so we can hear even more about her mother.  She remarries a lot.  Ana doesn’t like it.  Ana switches around tries to talk about his family instead.  He tells her what his parents and siblings are doing, and then tries to talk about travel, since his sister is in Paris.  Apparently, this means he’s ‘hiding something.’

Ana, shut up.  He is not ‘hiding something’ simply because he doesn’t want to give away every detail of his life to a perfect stranger.  Talking about travel and how nice Paris is, that’s pretty much normal first-date talk.  Stop trying to tell us that he’s hiding something.

Well, the date is perfectly normal.  Except in Ana’s head, where everything is OMG SO DRAMATIC.  At the end of it, they walk back to the hotel.  Ana trips and almost falls in the street, but Grey catches her.  As she’s clutched in his arms, she thinks about how good he smells and then wishes he would kiss her.

I suppose that counts as a cliffhanger in this novel.

Every time she says ‘oh my,’ I read it in George Takei’s voice.