I went into this book with the lowest expectations possible and it was a good thing. Obviously this book is a knock-off of Fifty Shades of Grey, and I didn't like those books, so I didn't expect much from this one. This story is 100% predictable, but I did not choose to read it to be surprised by interesting plot twists. I decided to read it for the gay spin on the Fifty Shades story. Even with my low expectations it managed to disappoint me.Strangely enough, even though this book really wasn't that great, I think that part of the problem is that it was too short. Whereas I felt like Fifty Shades of Grey was at least 100 pages too long, 50 Shades of Gay was about 100 pages too short. The author tried to cram all the same events from the 385 page "original" (obviously not completely an original because it is itself a knock-off of Twilight) into 174 pages and it was not done well. The author skipped a lot of plot and character development in an effort to make the story shorter. If he had left some of it in, the story might have been salvaged. I say "might" because it was still lacking in other areas.Taylor Grayson is a more selfish and cruel Christian Grey, if you can believe that. And in many ways the character of Alex is worse than the character of Ana, after whom he is based. Alex knows that Taylor is not treating him well and that Taylor is being selfish, but he does not coherently explain that to Taylor and instead allows Taylor to bully him into having sex. And speaking of sex, the first time Taylor and Alex have sex borders on non-consensual. Alex reveals to Taylor that he is a virgin and in the next moment Taylor drags Alex up to his bedroom and tells him, while stripping him, that they are going to have sex. He does not ask, at no point does he check if Alex is actually okay with this; he just tells him. Not only that, but he is excessively rough with Alex. He seems to disregard the fact that it is Alex's first time and instead primarily goes after his own pleasure. The specific scene that this is based off from Fifty Shades of Grey did not have that non-consensual and overly aggressive overtone to it; at least not one that I detected (and I was looking for any and all reasons to dislike that book).The sex in general was not appealing in this book. Most of the sex scenes felt sort of non-consensual on the part of Alex (even though he goes along with all of them with only slight resistance despite the fact that Taylor practically forces him) and selfish on the part of Taylor (he wanted Alex on his terms and he did not care how Alex felt about it). I had plenty of issues with Christian Grey in Fifty Shades of Grey so the fact that I liked him better than Taylor Grayson is saying something. Christian's one and only redeeming quality is that he did not want to hurt Ana (and I mean truly hurt both emotionally and physically...yes they engaged in some kinky sex but in general she was never injured and the one time he did injure her he totally freaked out; emotionally he also was ridiculously obsessed with making sure Ana was happy, kind of too much so...it got annoying). Taylor was not concerned at all about Alex and what he wanted.Stylistically the sex scenes, and the story in general, felt strange. It was like the author skipped over details. One minute Alex is standing in the door way with Taylor, and the very next sentence he was on the bed and pant-less and there was no description of how he got there. Like the author just wanted to "get to the good stuff" and didn't want to be bothered with all the other important details. Other non-sex scenes had similar problems; all the details were left out so you felt like you were jumping around in the story. Also the typos and grammar mistakes were atrocious. I've read books with a few typos before, and usually I can just let them go because they are minor, but it was out of control with this book. I read the Kindle version, so I don't know if print copies had this problem. It was so bad that I started to keep a list as I was reading. Here are a few that stood out as particularly bad:- "soar" instead of "sore" (the sentence was something like "Alex felt soar the next morning")- "prostate" instead of "prostitute" (Alex was making reference to Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman and he called her a "prostate")- "wrist" was spelled "writst"- this sentence: "My feeling of confidence and pride subsides evaporate." (huh?)- "since" instead of "sense" (the sentence was "Feeling a weird since of closure...")And that was just the big ones from the last half of the book; there were MANY more where that came from. There were also a ton of continuity errors (i.e. doors being closed after they were already closed, untying Alex after he was already untied, tying Alex face up then spanking him on the ass, etc.) Who was his editor? That person should be fired immediately!So, to make a long story short, should you read this book? In general I say don't waste your time. I read it because I was curious about a gay twist on the Fifty Shades story, but I shouldn't have bothered, and I don't think you should either. 2.5 stars, actually ** review coming on 12th of April ** I am a sucker for happy endings and there were good things that actually make you enjoy the book and other nasty writing habits. I don't appreciate the fact that authors make too many references, I think it is an escape to actually describe something, also the reader probably miss half of it. It is a pity that this book tried to be a fanfiction, because I can tell that Mr. Self actually has pretty nice ideas and when he was not pasting E.L. James stuff, the book was pretty good.
What do You think about 50 Shades Of Gay (2013)?
Hot and sexy...but repetitive, and not well written at all. As if any of you care ;)
—Reese
