I’m reading it now, and my freaking gorsh, does this woman ever overwrite! She reports every thought, every moment, every gesture, every tone, and uses the words “Crap” and “holy crap” on pretty much every other page.
I’ll never be able to look her in the eye again.
There are plenty of romance novels with extremely explicit, sometimes kinky sex, that are also well written. For example, Susan Johnson is a pretty well known name in erotic romance. Find some here:
http://www.likesbooks.com/cgi-bin/searchReviews.pl
(search by selecting “burning” under the category “sensuality” and “A” under Grade)
In short stories, any “Best American Erotica” anthology edited By Susie Bright is a safe bet. Mitzi Szereto is another fairly reliable anthology editor.
I’m enjoying the webcomic Sunstone (Stjepan-Sejic - Professional, Digital Artist | DeviantArt), which is where I heard about this novel. It’s about a lesbian couple that partakes in BDSM, and unlike Fifty Shades of Grey doesn’t make the dom sound like a serial killer.
Aww, you can search for male/male romance, but not female/female romance.
http://redlemonade.blogspot.ie/2012/09/fifty-shades-of-tedious-fuckery-vol-12.html
A blog that tells you all you need to about “50 Shades of Grey”.
There’s one thing I do like about this series, apart from the recaps and parodies: it’s given me something to write for NaNoWriMo. An anti-Fifty Shades of Grey, about an ex-Seabee who dates a man who isn’t an abusive stalker, has kinky sex because she enjoys it and whose short involvement with a less admirable lover (who may or may not be named Chris) ends with a headbutt.
I’ll add a big recommendation for Sunstone as a quality story as well. It does a great job of capturing the characters as people, with their hesitations, their eagerness, their joy, their loneliness, their moments of doubt, etc. They are not just cardboard cutouts doing the sexy fantasy deeds. (For the record, this is where Fifty Shades shines as well.) However, not everyone may find the lesbianism all that attractive, even though the artwork is not explicit (while making very clear what’s going on sexually at the same time. And the quality of the art is also topnotch.
Why yes, in the same sense that the works of George Bernard Shaw will tell you all you need to know about human beings, except of course that they come in two sexes, and have sex.