Book Review - Fifty Shades Darker

I love quick reads. Even better are books that take a long time to read but you can't put them down. The second book in the Fifty Shades series was really good, but didn't take very long to read. Four or five hours at most.


SPOILER ALERT: Do not read below the picture if you are planning to read this novel and don't want to know details about what happens.

I was pretty excited to get into this book and see where it led. I was right - obviously - Ana and Christian get back together almost immediately in the second book. I believe in normal time that six days go by.

Once they're back together, you realize that Ana's leaving has scared most of the deviant right out of Christian, and he's very serious about them making their relationship work however he needs to. You find out more about his mother - she sat by and watched as her pimp physically abused Christian as a child, snuffing out cigarettes on his body. Then she committed suicide and Christian was locked in with her body for four days. When his adoptive mother (who is a doctor) received him at the hospital, he was severely malnourished and dehydrated and wouldn't speak for almost two years.

One of his past submissives, Leila, comes back to haunt him in this book and stalks Christian and Ana. They eventually catch her in Ana's apartment and take her into custody of his psychiatrist. Ana gets to see him as his true dominant self here and she worries that she can't be enough for him still. Then Ana gets propositioned/blackmailed by her boss, but she defends herself and Christian has him fired (he bought the company). Christian asks Ana to marry him and she says she needs time to think about it. While she's thinking about it, his helicopter - the safest in it's class - suspiciously goes down and everyone thinks he's dead. He's alive - another obviously - and when Ana finds out, she says yes. When they're telling his family and friends, his past dominant/submissive freaks out. This would be Mrs. Robinson, the woman who initially made him a submissive, also known as Elena. He tells her to get out of his life, but his mother finds out about the relationship and confronts both Elena and Christian about it.

At the end of the book, there is an aside from Ana's boss, Jack, watching the house and musing about his failed attempt to kill Christian in the helicopter accident. Looks like I know what the third book will be about!!

All in all, another highly entertaining book. More action in this one, MUCH less BDSM. Still lots of sex, but it doesn't seem as extreme as the first book, probably because they've removed a lot of the BDSM stuff. It gets really mushy-type lovey at parts. I'm reminded of Twilight, when Bella and Edward talk about how they can't live without each other. It's a little nauseating at times, but I can get past that. I'm really looking forward to reading the third!