Fifty Shades ... of Pending Doom?

Five percent into this ...all I see is the adult version of Twilight. Right down to a best friend who is like a brother, who is actually in love with her, and their dads are best friends ... I can even argue that the names are quite similar. Christan or Edward. Bella or Ana .... Jacob or Jose.

And then there's these: Jacob and Jose both tanned with muscles, dark eyes, and dark hair. Bella worked in a sporting goods store ... Ana in a hardware store. Bella's mom? Kind of clueless and needs to be taken care of. At least she has her new husband Phil, right? Now that Bella is out of the house? Well, Ana's poor, ditzy mother has the attention span of a goldfish and moves from one failed project to the next. At least she has her new husband Bob since Ana moved out of the house ...

Edward and Christian's hair ... they're both rich ... Both books set in Washington, Bella dreams of Edward, Ana dreams of Christan. Bella uses holy crow, Ana uses holy cow. Then there's the hardware store owner's younger brother Paul. Very, very similar to Mike, the son of the sporting goods store owners. Both overly friendly to Bella/Ana. A good "buddy." Seriously, Ana just thought that about Paul ... not sure about the Twilight books, I know Bella calls Mike a "good buddy" to her dad in the movie.

I'm going to continue forth and try not to be annoyed at every turn. I liked the first chapter, but then I got to chapter two. I am sort of guilty, though. I came into this with negative thoughts about this book. I hear what people say, blah blah blah. I decided to read it for three reasons:

1. To give it the benefit of the doubt. You cannot always trust other people's opinions.

2. To see what the feck everyone is talking about, see what the fuss is about.

3. My friend and co-author says she thinks it may be a helpful study for when I work on our fifth book in our series.

So, here I go. Onward, march! Have to research for my own writing, after all. (No, my book doesn't have ANYTHING to do with a character like Grey or Ana or anything like them at all, really. And I cannot say why my friend thinks it will be good to study this for our books. That would reveal something that is supposed to be a surprise!)