The book is in first person narrative & present tense, 2 things that instantly put me off fiction.The main characters are strongly etched out, the negative one a bit better. But that may just be the first book. 50Shades is a romance but not in the sweet, comforting sense of ChickLit. This is romance gone horribly wrong, angst turned to depravity.The 1st book has so much sex that the first 100 pages seem more like erotica. However as the story builds up, one realises that sex is being used to illustrate some dark corners of the human psyche. The first book ends there and it's up to the other books to illuminate this further,resolve the situation & bring characters to full maturity. The book was gripping enough for me to complete it in 24 hours and move on to the second immediately.