By now, it's a well-known story: Dominant rich boy meets innocent girl and tries to make her his submissive. Girl resists but falls in love. Boy is perplexed, then falls in love. Drama ensues. Those wondering about Christian Grey's version of the events depicted in Fifty Shades of Grey can now satisfy their curiosity in exhaustive detail. James spends the majority of this work retreading the first novel in her best-selling trilogy while offering only a few tidbits of Christian's dark past. Christian is revealed as a sensitive man who is overwhelmed and confused by his passion for Anastasia Steele, a naïf unlike the submissives he's accustomed to dominating. Narrator Zachary Webber does an excellent job demonstrating the nuances of Christian's character, infusing emotion and occasional humor into sometimes dark subject matter. VERDICT This is nonessential listening, but it does eventually offer a look into Christian Grey's brutal past from his perspective. ["Though some readers of the 'Fifty Shades' series might be disappointed that the character they imagined is not the Christian Grey author James writes about here, others will be pleasantly surprised": LJ 7/1/15 online review of the Vintage hc; ow.ly/RHFLc.]-Anna -Mickelsen, Springfield City Lib., MA © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

In this mediocre erotic romance that lacks both passion and intimacy, the events of Fifty Shades of Grey are retold from Christian Grey's perspective, allowing readers to see inside the mind of the enigmatic, domineering businessman as he seduces and falls for college student Anastasia Steele. It's a perfect portrayal of an unhealthy relationship, as Grey, here shown to be an immature, self-loathing sadist with mother issues, attempts to lure a sexually inexperienced young woman into an ill-considered, unconvincing BDSM arrangement for which she's not suited. Furthermore, in switching vantage points, James sadly demonstrates a glaring inability to depict a convincing male perspective. Grey's inner voice shows him to be obsessive, possessive, insecure, and needy, with a tendency to treat and view Ana like a child rather than an adult potential lover. This version mirrors the source material so well that it adds very little to the story, merely filtering the events through a less sympathetic lens. "Yeah, yeah, baby, it's just a face and it's only skin deep. I need to dispel that admiring look from those eyes, but let's have some fun in the process!" thinks Grey upon first meeting Ana, and it's all downhill from there. Agent: Valerie Hoskins, Valerie Hoskins Associates. (June) c Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Fifty Shades of Grey, from Christian's perspective. Anastasia "Ana" Steele stumbles into billionaire Christian Grey's office and clambers her way into his heart despite his need for domination and her need for self-preservation. As James promised her readers, this book tells the now well-known story from Christian's point of view, which means that large swathes of the original novel featuring contact between Ana and Christianconversations, emails, and the infamous "binding contract between the Dominant and the Submissive"are essentially copied and pasted into this one, with Ana's first-person narration taken out and replaced by Christian's. What's surprising is how distant and hazy Ana feels, considering how Christian jumped off the pages of the original and how James made us feel connected to his struggles as seen from Ana's perspective. Christian is tortured and enigmatic, which was one of the strengths of Fifty Shades, but his narration lacks subtlety and insight. He continually simplifies his attraction to Ana, referring to her as hot or sexy and saying he wants to dominate her, without any indication that he appreciates the way she's resisting his domineering instinctsor maybe he does appreciate it but still wants to dominate her, which would make it feel even more like a bad high school relationship in which the senior tells the freshman "I really like you, but you're not what I'm looking for, so please change." Christian comes across less as damaged hero than self-centered juvenile bordering on icky creep, which definitely erodes his sexy mystique. James' storytelling here is tedious, repetitive, and sometimes even cringe-worthy. This new take on a familiar story would have been more powerful if Christian had shown the self-awareness and ability to change we saw through Ana's eyes in the original. Die-hard fans might argue this gives us something new, but it doesn'tand it's boring. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Fans of James' erotic Shades of Grey trilogy are literally the only audience for this redundant companion piece. The book is largely identical to Fifty Shades of Grey. Huge sections of dialogue and e-mail threads are reproduced unaltered. But this time, instead of being privy to the inner thoughts of a 22-year-old woman who is being seduced by a BDSM-loving billionaire, we are treated to the thoughts of the guy himself a guy with a room full of restraints at the ready and a gynecologist on call. In Fifty Shades, the reader is invited to imagine what dark and painful secrets led a man like Christian Grey to shrink from even the tenderest touch. In Grey, Christian recalls the violence he observed and endured at the hands of his crack whore mother's boyfriend/pimp. Ultimately, shedding light on his abusive childhood doesn't make Christian more sympathetic or enigmatic. In both books, Ana jokes about Christian's stalkerish tendencies. For a young woman being pursued by a guy with his own company and multiple planes, this could be kind of flattering. For the guy who is paying people to hack a recent graduate's flight plan and take away her car, it is childish and controlling and sad in a deeply unsexy way. And, all that being said, there's enough buzz about this sequel to generate demand and warrant buying copies for most public libraries. The novelty, however, has worn off, which means, happily, that not nearly as many multiple copies will be required.--Keefe, Karen Copyright 2015 Booklist