History YMMV / FiftyShadesOfGrey

* SerialNumbersFiledOff: ''Fifty Shades of Grey'' started life as ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' fanfiction, but later became an original work. Readers of both note many remaining similarities between the two works, especially the characterization.

** Still a better love story than...oh, wait. [[labelnote:Explanation]] A popular ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' meme is that {{Crack Pairing}}s or romances perceived as badly written are still "better love stories than ''Twilight''". However, ''Fifty Shades of Grey'' is actually [[AscendedFanfic directly based upon]] ''Twilight''; some people also consider Ana and Christian's relationship to be worse in every way than Bella and Edward's. [[/labelnote]]

** Many of the [[CoitusEnsues sex scenes]] could have been cut, as a lot of them are near-identically written and barely make a difference to the flow of events or characters.

* RomanticPlotTumor: Ana and Christian's romance ''is'' the main plot in the first book, but beginning with the second book, important things like Jack sexually harassing Ana and carrying out an elaborate revenge scheme against her and the Greys, Christian's ex Leila stalking him and Ana and so on, are barely given any attention at all or occur mostly off-page, so we can focus on Ana and Christian's relationship drama and [[CoitusEnsues sexy times]]. It doesn't help that the romance is arguably rather unconvincing at best, [[RomanticizedAbuse abusive]] and [[DestructiveRomance dysfunctional]] at worst.

* HypeBacklash: At the time of its publication, the trilogy was hyped up as being a boundary-pushing and risque erotic romance, heavily involving BDSM, which was rarely featured in mainstream romance. While it did make BDSM more visible in the mainstream, some readers felt the trilogy's content was actually pretty tame and [[CriticalResearchFailure inaccurately depicted BDSM]]...to say nothing of the controversy surrounding the way Ana and Christian's relationship [[RomanticizedAbuse can come off]] and the iffy writing.

* ProtectionFromEditors: It makes sense that the original story, ''Master of the Universe'', would have some spelling and grammatical errors, as well as several [[CriticalResearchFailure research errors]], as fanfictions usually aren't looked at by a formal editor. However, once they had the SerialNumbersFiledOff and properly published the books, many of these errors were actually left in. It almost makes one wonder if the books had an editor at all...and according to James's acknowledgements, they ''did''. And this is actually case where it was the author's first published novel seemingly getting this treatment. The same can definitely be said of the film adaptations after the books proved to be bestsellers, with James being given a surprising amount of creative control and vetoing several proposed changes (which actually led to the director of the first film quitting after it was finished).

* AuthorsSavingThrow:
** In ''Fifty Shades Freed'', Ana finally starts [[GrewASpine standing up to Christian]], recognizes a lot of his behavior as harmful and immature, and [[WhatTheHellHero calls him out on it]]. The fact that Christian never really changes (that we see in-story) and Ana apparently just accepts it undermines this, but it was good while it lasted.
** When the first book was adapted into film, they cut a lot of the book's more {{Narm}}y lines and questionable content, such as the infamous tampon scene. The director did try to make more changes, but unfortunately E.L James vetoed a lot of them, ultimately leading to her leaving the franchise.

* UnfortunateImplications: The notion that Christian Grey is into BDSM due to his traumatic and abusive childhood and the psychological issues resulting from that. [[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/16/fifty-shades-of-grey-isnt-bdsm_n_6684808.html Both real world practitioners of BDSM and psychiatrists disagree that there is any correlation between mental health problems and having an interest in the fetish.]]

* DiagnosedByTheAudience: Some readers have diagnosed Christian with certain personality disorders, but Narcissistic Personality Disorder is by far the most common. Symptoms of NPD that Christian displays include:
** Disregarding the feelings and wants of others
** A willingness to manipulate or coerce others to get what they want
** A sense of entitlement and strong desire for attention and admiration
** Expecting special favors or complete compliance with their demands
** Belittling or avoiding people they see as beneath them
** Insisting on having the best of everything
** Displaying an arrogant, aloof and haughty attitude

* ArcFatigue: It's not as bad as some examples due to only taking up one book, but the plotline involving Leila stalking Ana in ''Fifty Shades Darker'' starts to show signs of this. It lasts nearly the entire book (which is over 500 pages long) and yet nothing truly significant happens with it until the last third, when Leila unexpectedly shows up at Ana's apartment with a gun. It doesn't help that it has pretty much [[TrappedByMountainLions no impact on the story in the next book]] and that the situation [[IdiotPlot could've been resolved early on]] if Ana and Christian had just called the police, instead of trying and miserably failing to deal with the problem themselves.