Erotic Boredom: A Book Review of The Mister by E L James

oh this was so much worse than I thought it would be so we now have a new book from the world's most financially successful fan fiction author the one known as James [Music] [Music] yeah this is awful this is so boring ie I tried it was resist using the word boring to describe things because it doesn't tell you much but that is the best word I can come up with for this is astonishingly boring this is everything you do not want to do in a story I mean the thing that's really embarrassing is that while this is better than onii-san's books it's better in that i didn't find any misspelled words Belizeans books as awful as they were were more interesting than this stuff at least happened Ash series as you're gonna become famous as the noise barrier or something now unlike onii-san's books I could do some research on this book before I really got into it and it turns out the idea for this is older than 50 shades apparently l James was working on this before she actually really got the idea for Fifty Shades and jumped into that and just as well because if she had tried to publish this as her first book no one would know who she was the term Harlequin romance generally refers to those small trashy romance books there's usually a shirtless guy on the cover you don't get to see his face it's all just the chest and those look professional in comparison to this I can understand where the appeal is for those because oh that the guy is so dreamy and and the woman just needs someone to pull her out of her dull existence and to an extent that is very much what this book is about at its core but it takes so long to get there there are entire passages entire chapters that just go on repeating the same things in slightly too it's ways and that in and of itself would just be boring except it just gets so dumb and repetitive like after a while how many times do you need to hear that the main character the the female main character in this had a tragic backstory with no detail it is just she she was running from a man and then he don't get any real detail until I think it's like page 147 or something yeah 147 I take very good annotated notes now the tabs I've got my tabs up and not quite as bad as an easy on you actually can see some pages on the side there however I did have to change a few things up you see because I had an abundance of his little tab packets so these guys I had a whole bunch of these lying around I didn't have any yellows to pick from but oh I've got a crap ton of everything else so I had to slightly modify what all the colors represent and if I remember I will try to put it down in the description but blue stands for character notes green are for world building or plot notes the pink are for bad lines still yellow has been relegated more specifically to writing mistakes and I should have a bunch on the cover but they're very short supply so I want to actually preserve them when I can Orange had to change to something else it's they stand for other now if I can't quite fit a note in some of the category then I just put an orange cap now to be clear these are not all bad things like all these blues are not all some all the character moment there's something that I think is noteworthy some of them are pretty awful some of them are really awful but sometimes it's just like oh well this is the page where the female main character reveals that she loves playing the piano some of them are benign that so these aren't all damning evidence of how bad this book is but a number of them are you will notice however I do have these on top these are the sex scenes so we've got all these guys in the top we've got this gap in the middle and we've got all those in the back now this right here in the middle this middle section is the worst section of the book that right there that gap took me about two weeks to get through because it was that boring now I was so bored by this section that I sat down at one point I tried to power through as much as I could and in the span of about an hour and a half I went through six pages because I was so unengaged I was so unattached to the characters I was so out of my mind bored that I could not read more than a paragraph without needing to revert to some YouTube video just to get my brain re-engaged that is this book in a nutshell nothing happens for the longest time there there is some potential here there are some elements in the plot that I think could function to make a good story here's the core problem though this is about a hundred fifty pages of story spread out over 500 pages the amount of filler and and just stretching things the unnecessary characters that go into this there are people who had entire backstories and are immediately dropped by the end of the chapter the pacing in this book is like watching a snail trying to make his way through a lake of syrup after getting injected with a half lethal dose of tranquilizers oh my god but some of you are probably wondering what's the story actually about well L James is attempting to make another romantic erotic story and actually I want to myself on that obviously I can't go into full detail on a lot of the scenes not that would matter this is some of the blandest erotica I have ever seen in my life but obviously if I tried to go into full detail I run the risk of YouTube to completely do monetizing everything and what with the recent third ad pocalypse upon us I've got to be careful so personal challenge to myself I'm going to try to go through this entire review and keep it family-friendly let's see how long I last so the story centers around the lives of two characters the male is Maksim Trevelyan and fun fact apparently Trevelyan is Christian Grey's biological mother's maiden name and apparently there is some intentional connection there so yes this is in the same universe as Fifty Shades wrap your head around that one okay not like there are any actual connections between the two stories mind you as just a random goofy fat anyway Maxim is this aristocratic rich guy in Britain and he's never had to want for anything however one day he encounters a woman who's terrified of her past and running from something who comes to work as his maid like cleaning up his apartment her name is Olesya Tim machi and I'm just going to put a blanket apology on this entire review because there is a lot of Albanian and I know I'm going to screw it up it is well established that I cannot pronounce foreign words but there seems to be a spark between these two characters it's vague and uninteresting but it's there from the heart of London through the wild rural Cornwall to the bleak forbidding beauty of the Balkans the mister is a rollercoaster ride of danger and desire that leaves the reader breathless to the very last page I felt more thrills the last time I misplaced my keys anyway that's enough backstory I'm sure you're dying to hear some of this winning prose so let's get into it one of the first things we get is before the story actually starts and one thing I love in the open into a book aside Maps is I love it when you can get a really good quote to set the scenes it's like a single sentence or two that gives you a feeling of dread or excitement or adventure before you actually take the first steps into the journey of the book if an author can do that they they earn my respect now read hildreth and Charles Sasser did that great in a hill for a day great book by the way go check it out at the book opens with a small poem by Henry Vaughan my soul there is a country far beyond the stars where stands a wicked century all skillful in the wars and that gives you this really solemn opening to what the book describes as the harrowing true story of the most decorated small unit in history of the US military as told by one of the survivors again read this book is really good now I've also made it no secret that I am NOT a fan of cornelia funke Inkheart however one thing I did like is that every single chapter opens up with a new quote that deals specifically with the matters at hands within that chapter and I thought that was a very creative attempt to flavor the chapter it works it shows that she is an avid reader herself and that's a lot hats off to that that is I think a very respectable effort even if I still don't like the book but what am i mentioning all this because the mr. attempts to start off with its own twist on this only it doesn't take an actual quote it starts with a definition daily now informal one a newspaper published every day except Sunday the trial was reported in all the popular dailies British dated to a woman who was employed to clean someone else's house on a regular basis my daily comes every day yeah I bet she does now I admit I am NOT the most proficient person when it comes to British idioms and slang and things like that so I actually went to Twitter to ask my British viewers what they thought of this and if it's a common phrase apparently it is not this is the first time I've heard that phrase and I'm Scottish it's an old term don't use it nor hear it here anymore we never call them that never heard it before but I'm in the southwest it's not common unless you live in 1889 it fell out of common use around the 20th century I've moved here six years ago man and I've never seen it used in literature or study it's not common at all rare never heard anyone call a cleaner a daily domestic assistant yes but not daily never their cleaners or maids that's that's not even a term mate if it is it's an old-time word that's out of fashion I literally never heard that term before now to be perfectly fair there was one person who actually suggested that it was well okay two people who said it was real but I'm pretty sure one was too using me and the other one said this when I was growing up in the UK my mum worked as a maid and she was referred to that quite a bit so there we go we've got one person saying it's real and twelve saying it's not I would also like to thank everyone who participated in that Twitter thread for attempting to show that this is in fact a very outdated term but then we move on to the story and we're introduced to Britain a magical foreign land where tea flows like water where dental hygiene is merely a suggestion and we're spotted dick is not an alarming medical symptom I teach because I love so the story opens for real and we get a very interesting line now the very first sentence in your book is crucial it's got to set the scene and it has to it has to hook the audience it has to give them a little bit and have them wanting more although to be fair the book does reflect my own emotions very well no that's that's pretty much what I'm feeling wrapped up in a single word good job al James okay I'm being facetious actually the whole thing as its intended the opening goes like this no no no not the black not joking dark not the plastic bag now there are a lot of ways to open a book this one sucks but you you don't get a very clear image of what's going on and that's fine because it can set a set of a sense of mystery you're not sure what's going on and the main characters confusion falls along with your own it works but at the same time I can't help but feel that she's kind of dumb I mean what's this reference to a plastic bag the rest of the paragraph doesn't read much better is she's panicking about something but you don't know what and it's kind of confusing I mean it's not exactly fair but it sounds like the main character has a shopping bag stuck on her head oh god help me not the plastic bag how will I escape I got my hairs all frizzy now the problem though is that you don't get a full idea of what this scene is or what's really going on for a couple hundred pages and so it's an introduction yeah it raises questions and that's good but some of the questions are not good for example fear drives her forward as she dodges a few late nights shoppers in her quest to flee luck is with her the automatic doors are open first off why is it impressive that the automatic doors are working I mean if there are shoppers around then obviously the store is still open also if she's afraid or she needs help why doesn't she go to somebody I mean the stores are generally staffed well enough to help her out no like I said given her past I can understand why she doesn't but as an introduction we know nothing of this character going in so the question is why don't you go to a clerk and say can you call the cops for me or can you call my family members or something like that people are generally good and they generally want to help you so having the main character run around a store like this apparently late at night and then just go rushing off into the woods it's confusing especially because now if this were like some sort of a horror story where she has to run away from like Body Snatchers or something like that okay perfectly acceptable opening because you don't know who could be a human and who's an alien or whatever but it's an erotic romance and none of this makes sense I don't know what's going on and I will not know what's going on until like page 300 something so coming back this I'm like why did you open the book like this this is Alessia by the way it doesn't get much better on the next page when you see her running between trash cans wrapped in newspaper and cardboard and she says this she thinks her Nana's God for the address and it's such an awkward phrase I mean she's trying to get to a specific place that's fine but why would you think someone else is God for something it's just weird I don't get it anyway so chapter 1 opens with a sex scene this is how we're introduced to maxim and he's kind of reprehensible there's a lot to be said about establishing a solid character arc you generally want your person well there are all sorts of ways to do it really but one way that I like is stabbing the characters start low maybe there's something of a bad guy and throughout the course of the story they become a better person or they improve on some of their faults in the first four movie four Hessler and a bit of humility in Tangled Flynn writer starts off as a thief and pretty much gives up that lifestyle by the end here's the maximum starts out so his older brother kit recently died as in they buried him two days ago and Maxim's initial scene is him having sex with his brother's wife like your brother's barely even cold and you're railing his wife Maxim is something of a good-for-nothing and that means that maximum got to live his life by slacking off and not doing any thing apparently he worked as a a model and a DJ and had a small interest in photography for a little while but nothing becomes of that and if this was just a helping an old friend mourn the death of her husband thing you'd almost be able to excuse it I mean not really because this is pretty detestable except he takes any sense of remorse and just throws it out the window he deserved better than dear Caro and me his wastrel brother he didn't deserve this betrayal [ __ ] Who am I kidding Carolyn and I deserve each other she scratched my itch and I scratched hers we're both consenting and technically free adults yay my brother's dead I get to bang his wife she likes it I like it and it's what I do best [ __ ] some eager attractive woman into the small hours of the morning it's my favorite recreational activity and gives me something to do someone to do so good job Elle James I already hate your main character I'm on page seven and I want him to die and I probably just gotten demonetised got the sensor a lot of words in this so Maxim is this unrepentant aristocrat it really doesn't have any redeeming qualities about him he's a little empathic I guess later on eventually but that's more to serve the plot rather than actually learn a lesson I just get to later on so I don't want to say that this is entirely detached to anything I can relate to part of it though is a bit of a problem personally speaking because as an American I don't really understand the British aristocracy going into this book I did not have a firm understanding of what the British aristocracy does and coming out of this book I don't have a clear understanding of what the British aristocracy does I think it has something to do with real estate I mean if this book is anything to go off of they they own houses they own land and people serve them I am gonna get so much flak in the comment section but Maxim starts off this chapter a healthy dose of obnoxiousness access to a healthy trust fund since I turned 21 means I've never done a serious day's work in my life so are we supposed to hate this guy Maxim is basically a lazier more arrogant version of Christian great so if you didn't like that guy you'll hate Maxim the only thing is he doesn't have this secret dark backstory not that you wouldn't know the because of the amount of times that he references his brother's death and I would take that a little more seriously if he was not sleeping with his dead brother's wife now Maxim has a problem and that he is a sex addict it's it's never addressed or even brought up as a negative thing throughout the entire book except I'm on page 16 and he has now slept with three different women actually didn't Mark one of them because you don't actually get a sex scene it's just her name was Heather and now I want her to go home like dude see a specialist of course carolyn is not much better herself something of a basket case and that's not me being cruel she's actually kind of little loopy like we get the scene where she's being clingy and she needs maxim to have sex with her you know for for comfort reasons but she texts him this where are you call me pouting how sad how depressed can you actually be if you're sending childish text messages of like that how seriously am I supposed to take this character she sounds needy and dependent and entirely selfish she's like I mean sex is is fine as a coping mechanism some people do it and I'm not trying to throw shade on them but this is something else throughout the book it feels so much more like she needs people to have sex with her because she needs them to pay attention to her now one thing before I forget is the perspectives and how they're told for the story now we follow two separate characters Alessia and maxim and we see things from their perspective the difference is Alessia is told from third person limited and maxim is told from first person limited these sections are not written in such a way that I need the distinct style to really tell me who's talking because names are throw not quite frequently the thing that confuses me is Maxim's entire story all the sections are basically his own thoughts as he's thinking them in his head why then do we get italicized text because it feels weird like we're reading his thoughts but then we're reading the thoughts he thought what's that supposed to mean how come some thoughts are italicized and others aren't now one thing that could have been really clever would be if the italicized thoughts were to show some sort of inner conflict like if Maxim were to go around and think wow she's really cute I should have sex with her and then the italicized thought pop-up and he would say oh but I'm really sad right now and it don't feel like doing anything that would be a good thought it would show a lot of inner conflict a night went down right call it clever that's not what happens though the italicized text is just there there's nothing really distinguishing it from the rest of the prose I'm not sure why these words are emphasized when the others are not it is a bizarre attempt at writing that does not make any sense when you put half a second of thought into it Alexia's thoughts are fine there I mean they're bland and there's nothing really that stands out about them the the most unique thing about her entire sections is that occasionally she will slip into Albanian but not like in any complex way that shows character or depth or really explores the Albanian language you get small choppy phrases that looks like James just put something into Google Translate and just copy pasted the text that she got as a result I'm not even kidding like as an experiment I kept track of a lot of the Albanian text that was used and in context it makes sense you understand what's going on it's just not complex or anything it looks like it was just thrown in there arbitrarily because well this character is Albanian she's got to speak Albanian at some point like one Scene later on whether they are at the sea for the first time Alessia looks at the sea for the first time in her life and she says debt e debt t the sea and at first I thought that she was saying look look the sea I was wrong because apparently debt he means salt water at least according to Google and he got a few awkward phrases thrown in like that more for the sake of having them rather than establishing any kind of character James doesn't do anything with the Albanian text is what I'm saying it's just weird anyway so moving on maxim is trying to cope with his brother's extremely tragic death [Music] and taking up the the role as the head of the family now he's the Earl of Trevithick I admit I didn't actually look that up before filling this review so I don't know if that's like a real position like apparently KITT was known as this count portal on and I just like that is such a weird British name I don't know how real that is I don't know if my British fans were rolling their eyes at that I can't help but wonder if you couldn't have come up with a more British name like wrinkle spank upper bottom I'm gonna lose so many subscribers so anyway Alessia is the new maid in town and by some stroke miracle thing she managed to land Maxim as a client apparently Maxim's old maid I had to go back to Poland and recommend it Alessia as a stand-in even though unless he has only been in this country for like three weeks by this point so how she made contact I don't know I would think that they would need to do some sort of a background check on her or something I don't think that an aristocrat in an extremely expensive tart part of town apparently like there in Chelsea I guess that's the fancy part of London or I don't know and I'm an American we sustain our diets entirely on on coca-cola and hamburgers and sometimes war so in a way we get to unless he is chapter here and she's just cleaning up Maximus apartment for the first time and we get the first of many many many many reminders about her dark past a darker memory surfaces in her mind a memory from home ice blue eyes flinty with anger fury raining down in her no don't think of him she puts her head in her hands and rubs her forehead no no no she fled she's here she's in London she's safe she will never see him again now if you didn't think that was interesting just go back and repeat that small section of the review about 20 or 30 times and you'll have a rough idea of what it's like reading this book now if I were gonna sum up L James's writing style in any way it would be extraneous repetition repetitions the mother of all learning see the problem with James is Core writing style is the amount of detail she goes into doesn't serve the story or the characters and frankly drags the pacing through the mud it is unbearably slow we're talking 2:30 in the afternoon oh my god why won't this workday end slow now at some point you do want to fill in some detail to get an idea of what's going on what the characters are doing how they interact with things so on and so forth you do not need every single detail though there are things you are allowed to leave out not only do we get full description of what she's doing but we get full descriptions of every single room in the apartment like beyond the point where we actually need to we can get a general idea of how the rooms are furnished after a while the message is done and we don't need to keep getting bashed over the head with the same basic detail over and over she glances at the piano feeling cheated today was the day she was going to play she didn't have the nerve on Monday and she longs to play today would have been the first time in her head she hears Bach's Prelude in C minor her fingers tap out the notes in anger and the melody resonates inside her head in bright reds yellows and oranges a perfect accompaniment to her resentment the piece reaches its climax and then diminishes to a close as she throws a discarded t-shirt into the laundry basket oh and she walks in on Maximas he's passed out and she gets to see his naked but we also get something of a spare room that she's not allowed to enter and I cannot recall if we ever find out what's back there that's the problem with James she sets these things up with so much detail and then doesn't fall through them it's worse with the characters she uses because she'll bring in characters for no particular reason and then never does anything with them they don't do anything to enhance the plot and frankly they do so little to enhance the characters that if you cut them it would have no overall effects it wouldn't surprise me at all if this spare room apparently has nothing to do with anything Alessia moves to the rest of the apartment cleaning dusting and polishing but avoiding the one room she's not allowed to enter and it's not like his bedroom or something she cleans his bedroom so I don't know she seems to go into so much detail for well I mean aside from the fact he's actually a terrible writer but she seems to go into so much details in attempts to tantalize the reader you get a taste of something sexy and you you're supposed to want more the problem is the well there are two problems with that the first is the sex scenes that she has shown up to this point are not very interesting they are genuinely boring I can't really show because of youtube's constantly fluctuating rules so you'll have to take my word for it they're boring so we have nothing to look forward to there also it goes on way too long okay we get one scene on page 70 and we don't get another sex scene until page 229 that is way too much build-up because after a while your readers are gonna give up they're gonna say nothing's happened thus far I don't care anymore it's not worth the climb to get to that scene it is not worth all of this boring tedium just to get to a tepid uninteresting sex scene especially when you have such uninteresting dribble like this it's let's [ __ ] Thursday wow that that was Lin clever James couldn't even try to do something mildly amusing with that if maxim had gone with a term first day that's that's not good either that's also pretty bad but at least it's an effort at least I can tell you're trying to be funny you're failing miserably either way but at least there is a sign of effort just the sheer lack of creativity is what gets me so some boring happens and then Maxim eventually goes out to hang out with his sister I'm gonna go out for drinks and we get an example of how attractive Maxim is in the eyes of total strangers because the waitress apparently gives him a coy look she might have a fine artists in a cute smile but I'm not in the mood to play I'm preoccupied by my encounter with my daily and the memory of anxious dark eyes I frown dismissing the thought and turned my full attention to my sister as the hostess leaves with a disappointed pout I bring that up because that's the kind of guy that Maxim is he's super attractive and women just instantly flocked to his hotness to put it in words that I think James would not be opposed to using he is so hot that all the hot hotties wants to immediately go for all that God dang hotness and that leads me to one of my more confused moments of the book see Maxim is a very attractive guy who routinely goes out and meets women and just has sex with them okay fine whatever nothing wrong with that except when he first encounters Alicia in his apartment we get this seen her eyes meet mine and her tongue darts out and nervously she licks her upper lip my whole body tightens in a hot heavy rush as desire hits me like a demolition ball [ __ ] a duck I narrow my eyes as annoyance swiftly follows my desire what the hell is wrong with me why does a woman I've never met have such an effect on me it's irritating beneath fine arched brows her eyes grow wider and she takes a step back fumbling with the broom so that it falls from her hands and kleiers to the floor see the biggest problem with this is he's instantly smitten with Alessia and I'll buy that she's tract of the problem is maxim is a guy who goes out and bangs like nines and tens as a hobby why is he so intimidated by his cleaner or his daily rather we never get an answer for why he's so intimidated by Alessia why he just doesn't take her to the bedroom he's routinely intimidated by her and the book tries to set it up that the reason is because he's not sure what she thinks of him you know he's so used to like the waitress example that I mentioned earlier clearly fawning for him and Alessia is so very nervous that she doesn't really give an outward response however given his outward smooth charismatic nature before I see no reason why this would be a barrier why isn't he at least talk to her and how has he come across a woman who was never at least partially intimidated like oh my God he's so cute I I hope he doesn't think I'm hideous or something I mean like does he have a secret fetish for shy girls it's this problem that's brought up to be a problem not because it fits the characters but because well we've got to have something of a plot I'm proud of myself for this one we've got a typo on page 50 here who's a stupid bastard a clipped midatlantic voice demands the a should be lowercase there that is me being petty so this is pretty much the first half of the book the two of them both have some tragic backstory and they're both attracted to each other but they never really make any move on each other now I I previously mentioned he'll 488 that book the entire second half is a single fight on a single Hill and that is one of my favorite books of all time the pacing draws to an absolute crawl in Hill 488 but you are on your seat the entire time I read through a hundred and fifty pages in one sitting before I realized how far I had gone the first half of this book we're just setting up the plot and the characters and the universe is so boring frankly if you make it to the first half just just not even the Complete Book if you reach the halfway point about page 248 I think it is good job you had incredible stamina it is the same repetitive over and over they pine for each other and then they have backstories that they don't want to get into yet well I mean we know Maxim's backstory he said because his brothers dead still didn't stop him from having sex with his brother's widow Alessia does eventually give a smidge of backstory in the first half and you learn that she was actually smuggled into England by human traffickers alright so I wasn't sure how I wanted to approach this but I do want to do a bit of a signal boost for a group called the blue campaign the blue campaign works with the Department of Homeland Security in the United States and an attempt to counter human trafficking wherever can it provides lessons for all the government please who time for classes it gives hints on things to look for signs that someone may be a victim or signs that you could be witnessing human trafficking things like direct physical intimidation between two people control of finances things like that check the description there will be a link to the blue campaign and you can learn more about it because it is way more prevalent than you would think it is like I totally believe that Alessia was smuggled into England a you you see that kind of thing frightened really often if you look for it it is absolutely abhorrent and if we can do anything to get some sort of signal out there for more people to be aware of it for more people to know what to look for then awesome we've done something great I don't want to turn this into a big PSA especially on the middle of a book review but I do think it's important to take note of especially if we can get more eyes on the street because that's where they're needed so because nothing happens I'm not gonna go into too much detail for this I will however bring out a few noteworthy lines it's with trepidation that Alessia unlocks the door to the apartment with the piano Maxim's apartment her heart sinks when she's met with the unnerving silence of the alarm the entirety of alessia's sections can be summed up as I miss home but oh my god my new boss is so freaking hot ah we also get this strange moment where Maxim walks in while Alessi is cleaning and I'm thoroughly confused with how this works Alessi is wearing a housecoat despite that though we get this line Alessia leans over to clean a couch and Maksim takes note of her figure could this be any more illicit she's so close but so unattainable she moves to plump the black scatter cushions on the couch and her housecoat swings forward and stretches out across her backside betraying the pink underwear beneath we don't get a great description for once of the coat that she's wearing it's a broad one actually earlier on 58 we do get this she shivers as she removes them and struggles into her housecoat grateful that the plastic bag has kept it dry the hem falls to below her knees so that she's not immodest without her jeans how then does it position itself in such a way that Maxim can see her underwear is there some sort of a fashionable split in the back of that housecoat so severe it renders itself almost worthless it has it like somehow brush itself along one side of her back to allow her underwear to be visible I am confused how this works does Maxim have x-ray vision I grant maybe this is some sort of a weird fashion note that I just don't understand because I mean I wear goofy t-shirts and jeans and that's pretty much it my knowledge of modern fashion is like my knowledge of modern technology I still own a flip phone oh let's see we just get a couple of minor points Keira Linux is her satisfy emoticons so I'm not sure how sad she actually is maximum Carolyn have at one point done drugs Carolyn keeps jumping between emotions and comes off as either really unstable or bipolar Oh how's this for a comparison so we get this full poetic description of Alessia I am not gonna get monetized for this video if this page long description where she's talking about I mean it's it's not clever or anything god I wish I could actually show this basically she's thinking about Maxim naked compare that to Maxim in a similar scene I take quick care of myself that is it that is the entirety of his section Alessia it gets a full page description he gets one nondescript sentence good job James you you're really painting a solid image there so on page 91 we get one of maxim's assistants a guy named Oliver who comes in and kind of disapproves of Alessia working as a maid Early's working for Maxim because Oliver shakes his head you're the Earl of Trevor thick now she'll need to go on the payroll and this could have been a good point for centralized conflict here Maxim can't date her because she's a foreign maid who's in the country illegally there's an actual story to be had there there is something you can do with that unfortunately that's not what the central conflict is the central conflict is Alessia has a mysterious dark past and she's running from somebody I mean you you don't care about that it's not interesting but a scandal of Maxim loves this random woman and he can't date her because it would be scandalous his position would be compromised and he his the way he was perceived by his peers in the British aristocracy would be at risk that's there's real political drama right there and that's something you can make a story with the Britain had a king stepped down in just before World War two for pretty much that reason I'm grossly simplifying it I know but his role is never questioned or the possibility of a scandal is never really brought up frankly it's flat-out ignored there's one section at the very end which we will get to which is absolutely abysmal which completely it's like I have no idea how he thinks he's gonna justify this back home but I would I just realized I'm probably mispronouncing Trevor think terribly I have no idea if I am or not because British English is different in a lot of weird ways from American English I mean at least I pronounced the River Thames correctly even though it's spelled with an H and an a all right so skipping ahead a little bit because it's just dumb otherwise we're just going to go to the couple's first kiss so Alessio walks in to clean the apartment one day and Maximas passed out on the couch when all of a sudden she leans forward tried to help him off me we wake him up and help him get to to bed so we can get a proper rest when this happens all at once he tugs her down onto the sofa kissing her quickly and curling his arm around her so that he she's resting on top of him her head on top of his chest he's still asleep in this scene but it's a little uncomfortable I'm he's not completely at fault and the book doesn't try to make it look like he is but why did this have to be like their first kiss why couldn't have been something a little more consensual I mean unless he is not complaining about the whole thing she's a little freaked out but she otherwise kind of enjoys it she wants nothing more than to remain where she is to enjoy this new and thrilling experience but she cannot she knows it's wrong she knows he's dreaming and that's ultimately what James tries to do to in enhance the attention and give you a little teaser here and there's a little bit of a nudge towards relationship and then like 20 pages later and another little nudge you just get that slow build until like much later on I'm just gonna skip this whole chunk right here and nothing of consequence was missed especially when maxim just gets incredibly mopey with about the whole relationship and how Alessi is just so beyond his reach I have no hope with her I don't believe for an instant considering Maxim's for lack of a better word prowess and sexual accomplishments I don't believe for an instant that he would look at his made and instantly freeze up and just decided nope I'm not going to have any kind of a chance with her and it's not so much that she gave him any kind of an early rejection it was he sees her she's very attractive and he kind of right off the bat decides that she's too attractive to go after and he's not sure how she feels about him he has no idea what she feels and he has throughout the entire story never tries to approach it it's completely inverse to his character he is incredibly charismatic incredibly smooth around women up until this one and all of a sudden he locks up why because otherwise we wouldn't have a plot god this is bad and in his mind it's not just that unless he is pretty he can't get her out of her out of his head and then he decides this how many houses does she clean anyway how many pockets does she rummaged through I just like the thought perhaps I should hire her full-time then the dalek when my gut would never go one less unless there's only one way I'd be rid of this ache [ __ ] that's not going to happen so yeah congratulations douche now you've become Jeffrey Donovan's character from hitch I think things aren't gonna back on the site unless I bang her excuse me James tries to tease us to get us interested in alessia's backstory by making it sound mysterious and dangerous but she does it in the worst way these moments never tie back to what's going on and we never learn anything new what I know about Alessi on page 100 is the same that I know about her on page 10 this backstory gets drawn out indefinitely for some sort of dramatic reveal later but I'm so frustrated with how slowly this is going that the reveal won't shock me it'll just cease annoying me at best there's something else that really annoys me with the way that James writes this I don't know if she has an interest in the finer things in life but she insists on dropping brand names and fancy pretentious titles of things for the sake of doing it now one way you can absolutely set up a rich environment is by the use of brand names and big expensive sounding things long french names are a great way to do that for example saying that you're dining at chateau de LOI sounds a lot fancier than going to Joe's Crab Hut however James drops big names like this not for the sake of establishing character or fleshing out the universe but for the sake of dropping them for example on page 109 we get a scene with Alessia playing the piano and the piece she's playing is and I'm going to screw this up ledge Oh duh a la Villa d'Este which is apparently her favorite piece by Liszt now I am NOT the most classically inclined man I do have an appreciation for the classics I know who Franz Liszt is I'm familiar with some of his music not to the point where I instantly know what that piece is but my problem with that is there's no reason to have it there it's there to sound impressive even though we're told that it's alessia's favorite piece by Liszt there's no emotional connection to it there there's no heart behind it Alessia doesn't explain why she loves the piece it's reveal she has synesthesia so she sees colors when she hears sounds or something the book doesn't do a great job explaining it we just know that her troubles fade with the icy colours of the music and that's not really enough what is her connection to the piece when did she first hear it when did she first play it when did she master it what's her connection with the piece if you're gonna drop something that specific that's so far from I'll say it's somewhat removed from the public consciousness then there has to be a reason for it if you name drop for the sake of name dropping you look pretentious and James does that so many times with cameras and champagne brands piano brands it's not enough that she was playing a piece by Liszt that right there would be fine she's playing a very specific piece that I probably can't pronounce correctly she loves it but we don't know why this is not character building this is showing off and doing a terrible job at it so nothing happens for the next several pages until Maxim hears a knock on the door and it's these two guys claiming to be with immigration apparently they're looking for Alessia because she's in the country illegally well Maxim rightfully turns them away because they don't have a warrant or ID but that is enough to alarm Alessia and she has fled because she recognizes the voices and the two guys at the door were the ones who actually trafficked her into the country two thugs by the names of Dante and yi-yi-yi Lee eely eely calling him Bob anyway thinking that she doesn't have a choice she runs back to Magda a friend that Alessia is staying with and Maksim races her there and meets her there and promises to protect her and takes her into hiding so that she will be safe now this could be a great moment of character a selfless act taking somebody in need and giving them the help they desperately rely on maksim just takes Alessia out into the country and promises to let her hang out at one of his estates out in Cornwall where he will be joining her of course and then he goes and he ends the section terribly I want to ask her what she's endured what she's seen but now is not the right time all my plans all my fantasies will be for nothing if she can't bear to be with a man any man and I realized that I can't touch her so good job that that whole selfless moment makes you look like a self-centered prick I swear it's like we're supposed to hate maxim he's this overly horned up weirdo who gets turned on by the the slightest glance like sex addictions are real thing I know this is erotica but dude seek help despite that revelation that Alessia has been in some bad stuff because she explains she was smuggled into the country by traffickers and there were several other girls who were smuggled in with her we never find out what happens to any of them either there's some mystery about it oh I hope they got away but we have no idea if they're alive or dead or captured or what so that's a fun little hanging thread right there thanks James and she was clearly traumatized by the entire vent understandable but despite that the section I just read page 160 this one this little bit right here 163 you want me to kiss you I asked she nods she just got done explaining that she was in a very traumatic situation why are you making a move on her look the problem with okay I'll just say flat-out alessia was never touched again blue campaign how could Maxim be this blind also this is not how trafficking victims Act well Alessia escaped before she was raped sexual assault turns basic niceties into triggers a simple kiss can be seen as a violent act or a power move while I can't entirely fault maxim since he doesn't have the training to deal with someone in this position I am annoyed his every motivation centers around him getting laid in the end and the fact that James just has Alessia comply shows how out of touch with reality she is as an author James could have used this book as a great signal boost for trafficking and trafficking awareness and I'm not saying she's required to it's her books you can write about whatever she wants it's a it's a missed opportunity so I'm not too mad that she didn't write about it it's it's I don't have the right to impose my will on her like that I am however pissed off that she mishandled it so badly I mean is is Alessia traumatized or not because we see later on that she's afraid of the dark she was forced to go into a dark van and put a bag over her head when she was being trafficked into England and she hates the dark okay understand well good good bit of character right there however she does not act like she has been traumatized when it's inconvenient her trauma becomes this switch that just gets turned on and off depending upon what the plot needs her to do and that is terrible I'm I'm actually a little angry at that she's either perfectly okay and just living life happily or she's this scared nervous sniveling ball of terror there-there is no in-between and it's not like maxim is doing anything to help encourage any kind of a healthy approach to this psychologically his every interaction with her ultimately comes down to how do I have sex with this that is one of the most damaging perspectives you can have in that kind of a scenario I'm not trying to say that James is sexualizing trauma I don't think I absolutely don't believe that that's what she was going for whether or not she did is a matter for debate there's an obvious poorly conceived hero fantasy in here it's not appealing I don't think and nothing against here fantasies but this is not how you do it I'm doing so many tangents in this review but bad depictions of trafficking and trauma are not good enough for you maybe bad depictions of Albania are at the register I slide my credit card into the chip and pin machine conscious that she's watching my every move your card is magic Alessia says magic and I have to agree with her it's magic does Albania not have credit cards apparently James went to Albania to do research for this story I can't tell you if she liked it or not because while Alessia remembers Albania fondly a lot of it is just weird historical factoids and like thugs that run the country apparently for a very long while obey me it was not allowed to do anything because it was under the rule of the Communists and that is a plot point that is brought up like half a dozen times it clashes with the image that Alessia gives us you see we're told that Albania was very restrictive and people weren't allowed to do a lot of things Alessia had to deal with an abusive father but at the same time she just remembers it so fondly because though it's just such a beautiful country so these two images clash and we we don't get a firm idea of what Albania is supposed to be like I know next to nothing of Albania I'm terrified of going there now I mean yeah I might get shot in the street but oh I bet the mountain range is beautiful so we reach Cornwall a nice rural part of the country with small villages and little Hamlet's and I guess it's very cold and we get another 60 pages of nothing while these two just go back and forth about how they like each other but oh they're so afraid to act upon it there's no way that Maxim could go for such a plain girl like Alyssia and Maxim is afraid because oh how does he know that Alessia really likes him for him he and this is an important plot point he doesn't want to reveal that he is the earl of trevor thick too early because then well maybe she's just hanging out with him for his money the money that he insists on spending on her by the way like a 1-point he drops a thousand pounds on clothes for her for my American audience has about $1,200 and while this is presented as a selfless act one could probably make the impression that it's a power-play especially considering the trafficking and the trauma that Alessia had to go through you see because at that point he could use the idea that oh well I've spent so much money on you now now you owe me power-play is reinforced here page 270 I grinned and I like these I hold up a brown leather knee-high boot with a heel Maxim Alessio objects please she gives me a reluctant smile okay and later on the same page Alessia says this how can she ever repay him it's I'm so annoyed that this beeping miss opportunity is splattered throughout the books it's just that this is not how you treat traffic victims you've got to be more careful than this he doesn't even think despite knowing that she was trafficked in despite knowing she was trafficked in to become a sex slave he doesn't take any caution in how he treats her Alessia at least has her recent trauma and her very sheltered upbringing for why she's so oblivious maxim is so oblivious I'm not sure he's a functioning adult but at least he takes a firm stance you see he's understanding of her he's uh he's going to be a gracious host while he keeps Alessia by herself in a foreign country without offering to contact her family or anything he could certainly afford the overseas charges and then he says this don't worry you're safe here I'm not going to touch you well not unless you want me to how I'm currently selfless of you sir let us all be at awe of how incredibly selfless this hero is when did I acquire a conscience that is a very good question his entire character arc has been stiff and lifeless but don't think he's developing too much of a conscience tomorrow will be a better day tomorrow I'll have the lovely Alessia de machi to myself this man's only goal in life is to get his dick wet so this is kind of like a scene from Fifty Shades of Grey where Christian took Anna out of the city and a helicopter it's basically kidnapping with good intentions and again I know it's in erotic romance that's the point of the story but could the characters at least be likable I'm just not even that difficult to do you can give me a basic story about a traveling businessman who has to share a hotel room with a hitchhiking cheerleader and they hook up and that's those are more likeable characters with no backstory or anything they're two-dimensional but it's erotica you're not writing hi art here it doesn't have to be pretentious and hoity-toity so these to go around Cornwall for a little bit we see some other characters none of them mean anything we meet the vicar who bothers Maxim about going to church Maxim never goes to church so that's irrelevant we meet Megan who is a waitress at a restaurant they go to it means nothing apparently she hooked up with maxim at some point and she's angry that he's here with another woman and that's the extent of her contribution of the story so completely worthless we meet Sarah who works at a clothing store that's the scene when Maksim drops the thousand pounds on clothes and Sarah's interactions don't really go beyond that scene so why did she get so much attention you need to cut the irrelevant crap trim the fat from your story if James did that this book wouldn't be half as long as it is we got a scene where Maksim takes Alessia back to his estate and he cooks dinner for her end it's so romantic and a lot of stuff gets said and none of it's interesting and we get a description again this is what I'm talking about when I say that I think I can't tell if Elle James enjoyed Albania or not because apparently it's an extremely misogynistic country like to the point where Maxim offers to do the dishes after dinner and this completely stuns Alessia but surely he's not going to wash up no man does that come on that's not fair men do eventually clean up you just got to give us like a week or two to get around to it just don't be so demanding we got another really good example of the bad dialog right here when Maxim inadvertently upset Silesia apparently it's not a huge deal though cuz she despite being rather upset she like instantly forgives him you did nothing wrong she whispers his lips purse into a kiss against her fingertips and she removes her hand well if I did I'm sorry now do you want to go for a walk on the beach this walk on the beach was introduced just now right here this is a complete tonal shift from what the entire scene was before that a lot of James's writing issues have to do with her bad dialogue characters exist to move the story along not to be characters when Maksim apologizes to Alessia and she says that he did nothing wrong he replies with well if I did I'm sorry now do you want to go for a walk on the beach it sounds insincere like there's a lot of pent-up anger and he's apologizing to just to end some disagreement and not because he wants to patch things up the line comes off as Colden and human and so far the characters haven't risen from the roles of rich horny guy and wilting virgin with a dark past oh my god it is just this kind of garbage back and forth we get an exposition dumped on page 210 about Albania and it doesn't really do anything really just discusses the landscape by and large right so one of the things that Maxim does poorly is he does not have a lot of variety in his vocabulary for example he calls Alessia beautiful so many times that I decided to start counting it and going on from page 220 to the end of the book he refers to a less via beautiful not like thinking in his head but like outright saying I think you've had too much to drink beautiful and that doesn't count what I've read before that point boring see after this nice day on the beach and just whatever Maxim finally breaks the question and points out that he wants to make love to Alisha and she agrees and we get the first sex scene and the problem with the sex scenes and I've got to tread very carefully here but they're non descriptive rather they focus on all the least interesting elements what I'm reading with this scene is not really an erotic sex scene I'm reading several pages of conversation prior to foreplay I mean the actual scene itself is dull I mean that's a matter of my opinion some other people might like it I bet James does have a bunch of die-hard fans who insist that it's great probably because they never read anything else and this is the only example of erotica they can think of for comparison's sake go check out Sunstone that is really good stuff Sunstone is basically Fifty Shades of Grey done correctly and with lesbians good character great art it's it's a comic so there's that uh and it's BDSM done right so there that's my endorsement also Sunstone does not include lines like this reaching for a condom trying to keep my body in check I whisper are you ready it'll be quick might as well be truthful so this towering example of manliness this Titan of sexual prowess is a premature ejaculator it's really unfulfilled because keep in mind we haven't had a similar scene since page 70 and I'm reading on page 234 right now so we've had a whole this build-up we've had this entire spread of the book all of this leading up to well this won't last long it doesn't this is the rest of the actual sex scene you know with actual penetration and all that and then that's the end of the chapter we get into a new chapter after this so very unfulfilling oh but did you think that was bad cuz I also highlighted this line so Alessia was a virgin this was her first time and things got a little bloody uh I I can't I can't set this up correctly I'll just read the line I run my hand through my hair in an effort to Taemin and remember her blood on my hands so is this better or worse than the scene from there's something about Mary okay but moving on you may have heard that the mr. doesn't have like a big fetish thing Fifty Shades is all that BDSM this one is it's pretty much all vanilla not true there is actually a scene on page 244 and 245 where the foot fetishists get a little nod and I'm not trying to kink shame anybody apparently foot fetishes are like the most common fetish out there it's whatever it is kind of weird to read about when you're not into it though he kisses each toe in turn except the smallest which he puts into his mouth and sucks hard yeah suck toes more stuff we get a scene where Alicia and Max have a chess game not only is Alessia a gifted musician where she can play a piano on a concerto level apparently she's also a chess champion or plays like one at the very least four moves in and I'm dragging my hands through my hair as usual you've been holding out on me haven't you so she grew up in a neglectful abusive home where her father beat her mother and it's revealed later on that she was actually sold into marriage there doesn't seem to be like any actual cultural good of Albania as depicted in this book and despite that Alessia is a genius when it comes to chess and piano [Music] [Applause] I'm not going to go into this big thing about nature versus nurture but at some point nurture does have to come and do effect how can she do this why would she be allowed to do this however in an attempt to actually outdo olesya in something max and takes her out to a shooting range now this one I actually did take a bit of research on on my part just to get a few numbers correct and I can tell you that this is very poorly set up and I am 95% sure that L James has never fired a gun before now Maxim and Alessia meets Jenkins it's one of maxim's aides minion people and he set up a couple of shotguns and clay birds to shoot you know those rounded discs that fly into the air and you got a shooting down and they shatter into a thousand pieces it's I've done it before it's actually a lot of fun however shotguns are not a long-range weapon as any gamer can tell you sure Jenkins presses his remote and a clay flies into the air about 100 meters in front of us so I paid very close attention to the distance in this scene and the only number we get is the 100 meters that the clay flies in the air and it's not to come towards the people shooting it's going to go maybe sideways maybe further out maybe straight up it's not going to come towards so 100 meters is the closest range between the shooter and the clay pigeon now why do I bring that up well Maxim's apparently an ace and he has no trouble shooting a good number of the birds Alyssia at 100 meters manages to shoot 20 out of 40 this is the first time she has ever shot a gun mind you here's why that's astounding because Olympic distance for clay shooting maxes out at 76 meters the world record from what little research I did was around 130 meters somebody game named George Digweed 130 yards just for you David oh and he's using special ammo to do it too so for Alessia to hit anything at a hundred meters is astonishing she is a natural-born sharpshooter the book doesn't do anything with it she doesn't shoot a gun or anything for the entire story and the the whole thing really doesn't come up later I am just bringing it up to point out how out of touch James is with any kind of research or material she writes about like I said when I went shooting in a beginners course for clay pigeon shooting I was sure to get maybe 10 years still didn't hit everything especially because they do do anything for like gun safety ahead of time this is the first time Alessi has apparently fired a gun you're not going to go straight into shooting without saying by the way don't point the gun at us at the very least especially because that actually ends up happening so good job Nimrods there is this scene and I highlighted this because this is a great example of just how astonishingly boring the the prose and the dialogue in this book is I wanted to find at least something to demonstrate for you guys not reading this book how awful it was going through and I think this does it where I am from we are traditional she stands to clear the crockery from the table but Albania is changing in Taurani Tirana yes it is a modern city it is not so traditional or conservative there she puts the plates in the sink have you been no would you like to go she takes her seat once more and tilts her head to the side brushing her index finger across her lips her look is wistful for a brief moment yes one day have you traveled at all no only in books her smile brightens the room I have traveled all over the world in books and I've been to America Washington viii American TV yes Netflix HBO and Albania she grins at my surprise yes we have television so back home what did you do for kicks I asked kicks fun you know fun she looks a little puzzled I read watch TV practise my music sometimes I listen to the radio with my mother the BBC World Service do you go out no never sometimes in the summer we will walk in the town in the evening but it is with my family and sometimes I play the piano a recital for the public yes at the school on weddings your parents must be proud oh my god I bored that was barely a full page by the way try doing that another 500 times that's boring you're boring everybody quit boring everyone so despite the fun they've had together despite all the hanging out they've been doing despite the consensual making out and the multiple times they've had sex by this point all these times maxim still doesn't know how Alessia feels about him and he says this Earl of Trevor thick [ __ ] she deserves to know I rub my face why am I so reluctant to come clean because I don't know how she feels about me all of a sudden she pushes you onto her bed dims the lights rips off her clothes and you start having sex is she into you yeah again you really can't be too sure it's pretty dark in the room so she can't really see you properly so remember those two thugs who came by earlier pretending to be immigration officers well turns out that they well somebody may have burgled Maxim's apartment and it's pretty obvious it was them and although it's it's so bad it's so worrisome he forgot to set the alarm what did he lose oh my god and then he immediately drops that when he walks into the bedroom and sees Alessia sitting on the bed what is wrong she asks sitting up her hair falling over her breasts she looks rumpled and sexy eminently [ __ ] see this is another thing that I really cannot grasp about this book because yeah it's primarily erotica but it tries to be other things and it fails to that spectacularly like the first two pages of this chapter tries to set up this tension of oh my god I've been robbed what do I do and it immediately drops that for Wow my girlfriend has nice tits it just cannot focus on what it needs to focus on and because of that there's no narrative cohesion no tension can actually maintain itself which the plot that this book attempts to build desperately relies on this is like hearing a story from a kid on a sugar rush with ADHD and he cannot maintain focus on a single subject for more than five seconds it's difficult to follow because it's boring as hell and it's boring as hell because we cannot be pulled into the story because the story won't allow us to fall into the story anyway maksim leaves Alessia behind in his one house he has two houses in Cornwall leaves Alessia at the one goes off to the other one with all the servants and the like and deals with the burglary over there meanwhile the two thugs the two traffickers find out where Alessia is and break into the house there at first I'm like no way they can actually do that apparently they got the like there's there's a throwaway line where they get the address from Maxim's laptop which was stolen and from his apartment so it does work it's just and and I'm gonna be perfectly honest I was actually kind of getting into the story when these two break in because they do find Alessia and they start dragging her off and it looks like she actually doomed when maxim realizes that she's in trouble and drives back there's still everyone's still in the smaller house when he arrives and he grabs a shotgun and ends up cornering the two thugs there is a sense of tension not necessarily for the characters but because in large part is because something's finally bloody happening but the flow is actually pretty good like the narrative flow is pretty good there is a real sense of danger here because Alessia does get beaten a little bit and [Music] that entire plot thread is done for the rest of the book we don't need to worry about the traffickers we don't find out what happens to the other victims we don't know if this was part of some larger cell that got broken up or if the two thugs were reused to extract any information traffickers were a thing and now they're gone so the story the book wants to be so many things at once but does not have the focus to be any of them half a chapter I was kind of interested in what was going on that was it that was the only section of the book that I kind of enjoyed I mean if L James wants to take some a lot of writing classes she might be able to pull off a thriller at some point in the distant future I don't think she will and I don't think she'll admit that her writing is garbage so I'm not holding my breath for it but I try to be optimistic and encouraging even when I'm clearly wasting my time but as during this rescue that one of the maids working for maxim reveals that he's actually the earl of trevor thick this is a humongous shock for about a page or two because maxim explains his reason and unless he's like oh okay and this whole thing ends with maxim confessing his love for Alessia saying that he has fallen in love with her and Alessia admits that the biggest fear out of this whole thing with getting kidnapped again was that she would never be able to say that she loves him too and if you think that ends the whole does this person like me plot thread then you have way too much faith in this author but that's not before we get some golden lines like this thank you Alessia whispers what for saving me again it is you who has saved me nobody talks like this when writing say your lines out loud it's crucial well I don't think that would work in James's case I'm pretty sure she thinks this is like gold and dialogue but the rest of you there's hope for the rest of you there's a whole lot of nothing hold on so we get this golden moment where Alessio wakes up screaming because you know recent trauma and you're only getting kidnapped again by some people who stole your passport and smuggled you into the country for sex trade understandable that she'd be a little freaked out so she wakes up literally screaming and Maxim does try to relax her it's okay it was just a bad dream you're safe she passes out again and then we get this I close my eyes one hand in her hair and the other on her back enjoying her weight and her skin against mine I could get used to this where are your priorities see this is why I don't think Maxim's a good character because he is he's a walking penis that is his entire function and I know that's redundant because erotica but and I'm probably asking way too much because again erotica but I'm so annoying he's such a selfish douchebag everything comes back to him and his his quest to constantly get laid because at this point they've decided to be due to actually have a relationship boyfriend-girlfriend and that's fine except you actually have to have some degree of emotional investment in your relationship for it to work otherwise you're just there for the sex and if that's what you want to do that's fine but they're trying to treat this as this deep meaningful emotional connection like these two are star-crossed lovers from such different points of life just trying to make it work and it's like now you've got one person whose life has been garbage up to this point and now it's been given an easy pass because she managed to fall in love with a billionaire and we've got another guy who's like never known a day of struggle in his life who fell in love with the maid and now gets to take the daily and milk the maid as it were when I got more hump the help bang the butler s I don't think that one works quite as well we're so cancelled so yeah their their relationships is pretty much summed up with sex scenes and overly saccharine dialogue she folds her arms studying me I like to watch you shave I like you watching me i murmur as I finish up trees died for this and then maximum runs into Carolyn again what were you doing in Cornwall escaping from gangsters if you must know gangsters yes and falling in love there's also a section where here we are 398 Harry Potter is the reason why Alessia knows how to speak English so well apparently she got the books mailed in to the country in English and her grandmother taught her how to speak it through that and I think James was going for like a complimentary name-drop like up Harry fighters awesome there you go frankly we Ryan JK Rowling's position I would probably be disgusted this is like getting a ringing endorsement from Charles Manson Carolyn exists pretty much to create like romantic tension because at one point later on despite the fact that they're both clearly in love with each other the whole does you really love me kind of thing has to rear its head again for some reason and Maxim goes out to meet with Carolyn and that exists purely to make Alessia wonder if he's really that faithful it's stupid and it's resolved almost immediately when the confront the whole thing so it's meaningless tension and it has no weight like everything else in this book it does give us more terrible dialogue though you're crazy why you know why she's your [ __ ] cleaner does that matter yes it matters no it doesn't QED you're crazy if you don't think it matters crazy and love I shrug it's the truth with the help Carol don't be such a snob you can't choose who you love love chooses you ladies and gentlemen we have now reached oniisan levels of dialogue anyway so there was one other element in alessia's past that has not been addressed yet and that was the reason she wanted to escape the country in the first place see the traffickers she only ran into them after she decided to flee the reason she decided to flee in the first place is because her father sold her into marriage and the guy he sold her to was apparently crazy abusive like full-on beating her because women are property that that kind of shitty he pretty much says as much and somehow he finds her while she's out running errands I guess she he followed her from Maxim's apartment I forgot to mention they've come back from Cornwall and they're in London again they're just hanging out at the apartment where her they they plan on spending most of their time so unless he is abusive exes named Natalie or Anthony or something like that and he is pretty much your standard misogynistic piece of [ __ ] Anatoly has no self-awareness and does not understand why Alessia would not want to go back to Albania with him even though he openly beat her and treated her like property he literally says a woman is a sack made to endure and apparently that's an old Albanian legend to have something to do with kanoon of lek I'm not gonna get that dukkha genie unlike the traffickers though Anatoly does get her out of the country and it manages to successfully kidnap her now here's the thing Alessia has explained to maxim who and what her ex was her her betrothed as he's described and when he when maxim gets back home into his apartment he finds a note that Alessia left for him Anton Olli just gave her enough time to do that and basically says my betrothed is here and he has take me to my home in Albania thank you for everything the rest of the book is pretty much this rescue plot and it had the chance to be something it really genuinely could have been good because like I said I kind of liked the kidnapper scene from before it actually had some potential this is like that scene but stretched out over 70 pages oh god it is so mishandled again because there is no tension there there's no sense of danger because it is drawn out ad nauseam despite the fact that Maxim treats this as this horrible thing we've got to go and get my girlfriend back I'm on a never-ending quest to save my girlfriend he has the money and resources to go out and get a plane ticket like right then and there oh god there's so much wrong with this I've got to actually get all this straight first so aunt lino did find Alessia through mysterious means it is explained later on that the the friend that Alessia was staying with Magda apparently emailed alessia's mother which Alessia did not do for some reason and I guess told Alessia where Alessia was cleaning houses it's it's weird and it doesn't really work but that's - that's the explanation given thanks to Meghna we have the address of alessia's parents it's also thanks to Magna that alessia's fiancee found her I don't dwell on this tidbit of information because it makes me incandescent with fury that is the closest we really get I understand from a safety perspective why Magna might pass that information along I'm curious how ant Eleni got it though before we go much further I forgot about this little tidbit here so Caroline is with Maxim when they discover that Alessi has been kidnapped and Caroline is not terribly sympathetic but Maksim tries to explain why he's so distraught and heartbroken she pulls her arm and frowns with what seems like genuine concern you look shattered I turn blazing eyes at her I am slowly I get to my feet I think the woman I want to marry has just been kidnapped and and that's how Maksim reveals that he wants to marry Alessia now something I haven't touched on yet is the sequence of events in this book thus far like in terms of time frame Carolyn does not really question the whole oh you want to marry her but you barely know her even though she really should cuz um although we don't know precisely how long she has Alessia has been working for maxim it's not that long I want to say a week or two and then he swings by and takes her out to Cornwall and the whole everything at Cornwall takes over the takes place over the span of one weekend that entire I will say safely less than a month that these two have known each other in that timeframe Maxim wants to marry this woman I know Disney has kind of ruined the idea of romance because once you meet the one it's absolutely perfect and you absolutely know you've got to be with them and and nothing will go wrong after that thank God for that one scene from frozen you can't marry a man you just met I mean forget creating a scandal within the British aristocracy this is just garbage tear romance writing at this point the entire relationship has been over the span of one weekend this isn't just foolhardy this is amazingly stupid like [ __ ] you don't even know if she has food allergies yet oh god okay so the story continues continues and over the next several chapters we see every single scene as Maxim plots this desperate rescue to go down to Albania to save his girlfriend and even worse we see every significant moment and insignificant moment of her kidnapping this includes several stops for food two stops at hotels multiple conversations with Ana Loni it in it just keeps dragging itself on and on I will say there is an attempted rape scene it doesn't happen Alessia manages to stop it but it's there Alessia is doing whatever she can to not resign herself to this fate even though eventually she does kind of give up in kind of a huh well as well get it over with kind of a thing by the very end you would think maxim would be doing everything in his power to stop this I mean the amount of reach he has to had at least in Britain you would think he'd be able to call the police and say hey by the way keep an eye out on the ports for this guy he doesn't do that I doesn't have any kind of a private plane that he can use he just gets a a ticket with British Airways good old reliable service there in fact he is both in a rush and not in a rush at all it's weird oh we've got to get to the airport but first let's stop in this part of town so I can pick out a fashionable ring to propose with where are your priorities man it's like you've got to make sure there is a girlfriend you can pop the question to first maybe maybe date her for at least a few more months but no instead of this epic quest to go save the woman he loves he decides to go ring shopping I needed a ring one that would do justice to alessia's beauty and talent there were two in the collection that might have been suitable but I chose the 1930s Cartier platinum and diamond ring that my grandfather huge Herve Lane why don't we keep screwing that up [Music] trouble lane trouble Yan Trevelyan uh and doc missed out upon my grandmother Allegra in 1935 it's an exquisite simple and elegant ring 2.79 carats and currently valued at 45,000 pounds I hope Alessia likes it if all goes to plan she'll return to the UK wearing it as my fiance aside from the point that proposing this early into the relationship is stupid as hell we are instantly taken out of the moment by scenes like that because Alessia cannot be in that much danger if our protagonist is ring shopping there is no tension if the characters feel no tension the rest of the book depends on this tense moment of will they be able to get her back will they even be able to find her because at this point Ana Laney is driving through Europe with Alessia in the trunk of his car sometimes shotgun but you know EU rules and they make it the point they make it a point of pointing out which borders Alessia has to go into the trunk floor as a real good quality writing maxim seems awfully calm for a guy whose girlfriend is in danger there's no sense of tension here he sounds like a guy just out on a road trip not something to rush into a daring rescue they even stop in a bar for drinks the reason given is because there's a bad storm and they're in a foreign country that they don't know how to navigate through but that's a weak reasoning at best if the love of my life were in danger like this it would take nothing short of a demonic army to stop me maxim takes a buddy with him some guy named Tom and Tom insists that this is some sort of a reaction to kids death which I mean that the whole proposal and rushing to another country to save a woman he barely knows is the I mean the whole thing being a reaction to his older brother's death makes a lot of sense honestly it's an emotional overreaction in an attempt to maintain some sort of a desperate grasp or some relationship you might be able to control I mean that makes perfect sense to me but maximum end of the book pretend that no this is just true love and they're meant to be together you don't know her like I do you've known her for a month here's the thing though this is the worst kidnapping ever because an awamiya just doesn't do anything to restrain Alessia and Alessia does nothing to try to escape okay okay yeah to be fair she does run away once at the very beginning and he chases her down and tackles her and that's it that's the last time she tries to get away meanwhile we get such lines as I'm going to the restroom don't run I'll find you and there in a restaurant at that point so she could just calmly walk out and probably make her way into a crowd or around a building or something oh and that's the other thing I forgot to mention so I don't know how James set this up in her head but the sequence of events is terribly set up and here's why we get multiple scenes with Alessia and antoine going through europe and we get a lot of detail yes much of is extraneous and a lot of dialog between the two of them it's slow when it's boring but things are sort of technically happening meanwhile we also get scenes with maxim and his buddy tom as they land in albania and slowly make their way to alessia's parents house the problem is they don't have nearly as much stuff going on there's there's some attempt at tension between Alessia and Abernathy and it's not great but it's something meanwhile maxim is just farting around and the plot is artificially giving him reasons to pipe in every once in a while like another stuck in town at one point cuz it's raining outside yeah that's remedy at one point when they finally reach the town that alessia's parents are in they they just intentionally draw things out by going to a bar i han't Fanus a crumpled piece of paper with alessia's parents address yes what time would you like us to go five minutes just give me time to unpack steady on Trevithick butts in tom can't we have a drink first hmm as my father would say some Dutch courage always helps a quick one and just one okay I'm going to meet my future wife's parents I don't want to bestow sheis you are attempting to save a kidnapping victim time is of the essence this is what I'm talking about when I say there is no tension I don't care what's going on because the characters don't care what's going on why would I give a [ __ ] the big heroes busy getting sloshed and and is dead set on marrying this woman I don't care what's going on I'm bored and I want this to stop okay I'm skipping ahead a little bit because I'm tired of this but eventually all the parties converge at alessia's parents house so Maxima arrives in town several hours early and actually shows up a twice to alessia's parents house the second time is a couple of minutes before Alessia and Android are supposed to be there and we get this dramatic I came for you oh my god there's so much kind of a moment and they they kind of out an out state that a ployed is this abusive freak and he pulls a gun on people and it's so dramatic uh it's a fake pregnancy thing in there but like I said there's no tension so who cares here's what's really disgusting though so like I said before alessia's father sold her to abba Labadie the translator quietly relays the words in English lone Maksim says he turns his head slightly and speaks so that only Alessia can hear this [ __ ] paid for you Alessia flushes Maxum faces her father I will match any loan you were so close is you were properly outraged and then you did exactly the same thing as the bad guy you clueless wet but this whole revelation and the scene and not being able to murder people because Alessia took the bullets out of his gun [Music] really puts a thorn in argon the terrible side here so he just kind of calls Alessio [ __ ] and then stops off and then of course because it had to come to this maxim goes down on one knee and does this Alessia Tamachi maxim says please do me the honor of becoming my countess I love you I want to be with you always spend your life with me at my side always marry me and Alessia being the only sane adult here says dude we only hooked up a couple of times what the hell no obviously she gives in and agrees to marry him and you know how I said earlier that the whole scandal with him marrying someone from a foreign country could have been an interesting twist well you can forget all of that because not only do they agree to marry not only do these two people who have known about each other for less than a month agree to get married after dating for a single weekend they agree to get married in Albania later that week alessia's father raises his rocky once more alcohol I'm not even gonna try to pronounce that so I'm gonna rely on Google Translate via he met by a snap of me a mood that bought that monocle a knee cap ooh and ahh --mess my apologies to the entirety of Albania he downs his shot and brandishes his gun with a look of Glee vanna's quietly translates my daughter is your problem now and you'll be married here within a week oh don't be shotgun wedding I wonder what the other Earl's and Dukes and everybody in Britain like the populace at large will think when Maxim Trevelyan the Earl of Trevithick returns from a basically a week-long getaway married to somebody else that they've never heard of before I imagine it'll be quite the scandal but yes it that's that's where the story ends later this week we'll be married I can't wait I just have to tell my mother and that is the last line Oh God that was painful I think I have demonstrated ful that L James is and yes I know it's Yale James I'm I'm mocking her does not have any grasp of of character or plotting or pacing or timing or tension or romance or I couldn't have shown you but there is no sense of errata sysm I frankly the the sex scenes are the most pg-13 sex scenes I can recall reading Sun stone has steamier scenes and that's available for free on deviantART it is stunningly boring it's just that there's no sense of stakes or tension in anything there's no real chemistry between the characters we don't really have a reason to like Maksim like anywhere in the story it's kind of cool when it goes to alessia's rescue but there's like I said no tension because certainly on the second kidnapping attempt he's not in a rush Alessia is not much better I mean she's more likable and as a character she's okay she's just oddly constructed because she has a lot more knowledge than it sounds like she should have but a lot more knowledgeable more talented it sounds like she should have access to because how Albania as a whole is casting a pretty bad light like the women are largely property there there are no women along the streets when Maksim drives through the first time it's it's pretty grim all things considered is like Albania and I'm sure this is a terrible representation of it but Albania looks like this horrible misogynistic country in this book oh but the landscape is nice so I guess that bowels is out come to Albania for the the nice trees and the woman beating there are at least half a dozen characters that do not need to be in the book at all most of the side characters are two-dimensional as hell and in some cases that's fine Oh a lot of the servants and the like don't need that much definition but the angry ex waitress at the restaurant didn't need to be there The Vicar didn't need to be there missus Kingsbury there was apparently another one of alessia's clients we got this whole page ranting about her and her behaviors which didn't add the story at all frankly alessia's other clients when she was still working as a maid should have just stayed as generic background figures like they didn't need any definition they just needed to serve as placeholders to show that yep she has other clients and that's that's the extent that we needed for the purposes of the story I mean Carolyn was largely worthless she existed there for like momentary romantic tension for half a page I I guess the mom was okay I didn't get to her she was largely irrelevant but I guess she's okay as establishing backstory for maxim his sister could have been cut entirely frankly his brother was a relative the dead brother was relevant especially because maxim doesn't even do anything with the whole I'm so sad that my brother is dead thing if that had turned into maybe I am rushing this relationship because I'm desperately afraid that those close to me are going to leave me that could have been something interesting that could have been an actual character motive but instead is just oh no I gotta start doing things now he doesn't even have a character arc Alessia pretty much doesn't have a character arc oh okay she's got the most character arc out of anybody else in this story it goes from I'm very afraid and nobody loves me to I'm very afraid and this one person loves me not dynamic or interesting it's uh so bad a couple of extra notes that I didn't get to Lord Trevor Thicke sounds like a bad porno name like sir sloppy dog while James does do a lot to set up the character she takes way too long to get there large paragraphs could be condensed or cut and nothing substantial would be lost it also doesn't help that these things aren't told in interesting ways take this for example let's say you've got a guy who goes on this extensive story about how he was the champion pitcher in his high school baseball team now compare that to a guy out on a date and they go to the carnival and he goes up to one of those knock over the cans places knock over the cans to get a stuffed animal for the lady and he knocks over the cans and she's like oh wow you're such a good pitcher and just like thanks I was the champ pitcher in high school which of those two examples is more interesting the one where you show that he was a pitcher or the one where you tell that he was a pitcher there is a difference James figure it out James relies on particular words way too much for example empathic frisian and beautiful well i would say take a shot every time you see one of those words but the problem is the book would take way too long for you to get through so no risk of dying of alcohol poisoning James tries to tease the reader by drawing things out in what in her mind is a slow seductive process a striptease can be a good way to tantalize and entice someone with the promise of a good time soon James is similar attempt takes way way too long and the sex scenes we've seen thus far have been wildly unimpressive so we have no idea what we could be getting but it takes too long to get there and after a while you stop caring according to English fans on Twitter daily is not a common term for a made now it's possible that it's a common among the super elite but that just makes James look severely out of touch with the rest of her audience or if she's trying way too hard to blend in with the elite which she now seems to associate herself as the story structure is as follows plot long sequences with maxima D'Alessio wondering how the other thinks about them or worrying about their past plot repeat ad nauseam this book has an interesting story at it's very core but it's surrounded by some of the slowest pacing I've ever seen it's like getting through an action-packed James Bond movie but instead of a 2-hour adventure you have a ten hour adventure now filled in with these bloated scenes detailing the HR policies of the Bank of America the sex scenes are afraid to go into X rating territory meaning they're largely worthless these are third pg-13 or R at best this underwhelming performance makes me wonder why this book even exists in the first place what is the real happy benefit in this relationship romantic stories are usually told like this because two incomplete people meet and meld like Beauty and the Beast beasts needed someone to reel him in and Belle needed a challenge in life both complemented each other and at least within the context of the story they worked well together not sure about the rest of the lives but whatever in the mr. Alessia found someone to get her out of poverty while Maxim found someone who pushed him into monogamy not exactly a fairytale romance there was a moment where Anatoly or whatever the hell his name was said the a woman as a sack maid doing door thing and I actually decided to look that up and for half a moment I was interested in it because it was subtle backstory that fleshed out the the world a little bit more and then James goes and ruins at half a page later by flat-out explaining what it is I was about to compliment James for subtle use of old Albanian folklore but she spelled it out ruining the moment the explanation wasn't necessary since the scene has an obvious meaning and the kidnapper is an older Albanian guy the connection is pretty easy to make James is just trying to show off again sometimes the fun in reading is discovering things for yourself I mean look how much that works for Harry Potter people are still coming up with fan theories to this day and it's awesome Antoinette is clearly written as a foil to Maxim a bad rich guy versus a good rich guy but there is no more deaf beyond that in either of their characters overall very bad book too wordy many elements are tacked on and unnecessary characters were flat most were 2-dimensional much of the set pieces and notes on Albania culture were geared more towards James showing off rather than enhancing the story very very very bad book also barely any resolution climax happens and then the book ends in like four pages so it's garbage so that was my review of the mister by Al James it it was not fun it it was a challenge for all the wrong reasons and I don't want to touch anything that that woman never creates ever again she has no talent for writing and near really needs to either take several lessons or knock at the [ __ ] off but you guys apparently like it when I make these longer views so whatever speaking of which though I need to decide on what to review next so head on over my Twitter within the first day of this review being posted and you'll be able to vote on what the next project will be for the next long book review just be generous I've got a lot of garbage books

Channel: KrimsonRogue

Views: 1,052,224

Keywords: Mister, E L James, 50 Shades of Gray, Grey, Fifty, Book, Review, Erotica, Boring, Boredom, Sex

Id: GxEizIgLVeA

Length: 115min 38sec (6938 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 29 2019