Ana now has a proverbial bun in the oven, thanks to a bunch of skipped medical appointments and Mr. “I hate condoms”).
Perhaps I shouldn’t tell Christian. Perhaps I . . . perhaps I should end this. I halt my thoughts on that dark path, alarmed at the direction they’re taking. Instinctively my hand sweeps down to rest protectively over my belly. No.
Well, at least she considered abortion.
(Does this mean Jose is going to fall in love with the fetus?)
Ray’s still in the hospital and it’s Ana’s birthday. There’s very little kink content in chapter 18, even less than the Aspen chapters.
I could take this opportunity to discuss how a D/s relationship should handle the intrusion of a real life crisis like the serious illness of a family member, but I wouldn’t call what Ana and Christian have a D/s relationship. It’s really a marriage that occasionally has BDSM play. There isn’t an overarching agreement that regulates their interaction. Ana has been more involved in their BDSM interactions, but this particular plot thread is very slow. We’re in the last third of the book three, and their BDSM relationship is still in the very early stages.
If you’re interested, Ray wakes up when Ana reads the sports section to him.
I think EL James ran out of good ideas a while back, and now she’s just throwing random plot developments at us. To wit: Ray, Ana’s step-father, is now in hospital. What follows is boiler-plate medical drama.
I also think that someone should have told EL James it is okay to use scene breaks more than she does, because after the call about Ray, we get a couple of pages on the logistics of Ana informing her work superiors and leaving her office. At least Christian is understanding and supportive when he finds out about this.
Before she meets Leila, Ana gets an inkling of just how much the Christian Grey Goon Squad has been controlling her life.
“Mrs. Grey, Leila Williams is on your proscribed list of visitors.”
“What?” I have a proscribed list?
“On our watch list, ma’am. Taylor and Welch have been quite specific about not letting her come into contact with you.”
I frown, not understanding. “Is she dangerous?”
“I can’t say, ma’am.”
“Why do I even know that she’s here?”
Prescott swallows and for a moment looks awkward. “I was on a restroom break. She came in, spoke directly to Claire, and Claire called Hannah.”
You’d think Ana would be wondering a few other things, such as: who else is on this list? Her mother? Ray? Jose? Kate? Can she see the list? Is Hannah, Ana’s assistant and actually another employee of Christian’s, screening her calls? And maybe, how does she get the hell out of this gilded cage?
Instead, Ana finds it funny that she’s only saw this crack in the invisible fortress Christian has built around her because the Goonette, her bodyguard/duenna/minder, was in the bathroom.
We’re over the hump, more than halfway through this… thing. I have to stay focused and soldier on, only concern myself with the BDSM bits, not that there have been many in the last couple of chapters. We’ve moved into what amounts to your basic “shopping and fucking” novel.
After the Gothic psychodrama of Ana and Christian’s tortured couplings, and murderous plots by Christian’s former employees, it’s hard to care that Elliot may be cheating on Kate even as he proposes marriage to her. (Another symptom of a post-shark-jump TV series: random and gratuitous proposals and weddings.)
This feels like one of those post-shark-jump episodes of a TV series, when the whole cast heads off to Hawaii or a dude ranch or something because the writers have run out of ideas. Jack Hyde is in jail so there’s no external threat, and Ana and Christian are married, so there’s no big event to build up to. We still have more than a third of this last book to go and there’s nothing to generate tension except waiting for Christian to blow up again.
More pillow talk in the playroom. (Ana seems to have recovered quickly.) Christian still seems to expect Ana to obey him and not defy him, even though Ana’s moments of independence are rather childish and largely symbolic. E.g. going out for drinks with Kate.
Christian has pushed Ana into scene in the playroom when she’d rather stop and talk about their relationship. Ana finally safewords, asserting herself in the only way Christian is likely to heed.
“Red,” I whimper. “Red. Red.” The tears course down my face.
He stills. “No!” He gasps, stunned. “Jesus Christ, no.”
He moves quickly, unclipping my hands, clasping me around my waist and leaning down to unclip my ankles, while I put my head in my hands and weep.
“No, no, no. Ana, please. No.”
This is, I think, the second time a BDSM scene between these two people in this room has ended with her in tears. Add to that the possible rape back in book 1, which also ended with her in tears. I bet if you tabulated all the BDSM scenes, or sex scenes, and calculated how many left Ana crying, it would be an unacceptable average.
I didn’t sign on for this. I thought I would be reading what amounted to a romantic comedy with kink. Instead I’ve been drawn into something more like a Gothic psychodrama about a weak-willed, not terribly bright woman who married a psychopathic billionaire, with a sprinkling of BDSM scenes here and there.
Well, nobody put me up to this, so I can’t really complain, and it is too late to quit now anyway. Onward.
