Beach Reads: Fifty Shades of Grey

There is nothing better than a juicy beach read. Spending the afternoon on any of the gorgeous beaches in Puerto Vallarta, a drink in your hand and a less-than-literary book in your lap is one of the best ways to spend your vacation in Vallarta.  And unless you’ve put your head in the sand instead of your toes, you’ve already heard the buzz around Fifty Shades of Grey, by E.L James, the naughty little paperback making the rounds through suburban book clubs around North America.

Fifty Shades of Grey is the first of the Fifty Shades trilogy, followed by Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Free.  It follows the elicit love affair between college student, Anastasia Steele, and billionaire business magnet, Christian Grey, who is all of 27 years old and has enough dirty little secrets that he needs an entire room in his palatial home to house them. 

The affair between Steele and Grey has elements of bondage, domination and submission that are racy enough that legions of women have claimed that Fifty Shades has “saved their marriage” with the inspiration to spicy things up in their relationships.

E.L James, while admittedly creating one of the best guilty-pleasure, page-turners of the last decade, is unlikely to win a literary prize any time soon.  Her dialogue rings laughably false, the prose can be painful at times and her use of English idioms for a novel set in the Pacific Northwest is entirely distracting….but it’s naughty, fun and impossible to put down, making it the perfect beach read.