You’ve either heard of Fifty Shades of Grey every five seconds for the last two months or you’ve never heard of it at all. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of reading it or who have not tried to illegally download it online, Fifty Shades of Grey is a work of erotic fiction, originally based off of Twilight fan fiction, that is sweeping away America’s females. I realize how horrific that description sounds, but don’t be dismayed because there are no vampires, werewolves or sparkles in this story. Essentially, picture the relationship between Bella and Edward, but instead of Edward being a vampire, he’s an obsessive-compulsive entrepreneur whose idea of a good time is raunchy S&M.

The book centers on a college senior, Anastasia, who meets an older businessman, Christian Grey. He takes an immediate liking to her innocent and blunt nature. In total Bella fashion, she is immediately drawn to his power, debonair lifestyle and wildly good looks. As attracted as she is to him, she soon comes to realize Christian is actually a dangerous and twisted guy with a tortured past that manifests itself through really violent and kinky sex. I realize this still sounds disturbing, but it’s one of the best guilty pleasures to grace the literary world in a long time. Moreover, judging from the enormous amount of publicity and press this book has gotten, it’s no longer a faux pas to be caught reading this novel. But that still did not stop me from dimming my monitor and turning my screen away from those seated near me when reading it on an airplane.

On the surface, this book is your average soft-core pornographic erotic-fiction novel. It’s not well written, the characters aren’t original and the sex scenes aren’t anything that out of this world. But for some reason, the same thing that attracted people to Twilight in all of its horribleness is the same thing that attracts people to this book. It gives you a snippet of something that you can’t have and probably (hopefully? maybe?) won’t ever have. It’s a pretty difficult thing to admit this book is actually pretty erotic, but once you’ve admitted that to yourself, you can get through it in two days tops. That said, be warned: Fifty Shades of Grey is not for the faint of heart. This is nun-blushing, kinky, feverish erotica, and it’s an excellent waste of time.

-Mackenzie Bronk