50 Shades Freed…BUT FROM WHAT?? | Book 3 Review & Summary | Bonus Minisode

In this third episode of the Besties in the Books mini-series Fifty Shades of May, hosts Ashley and Liz dive deep into Fifty Shades Freed by E.L. James, the final installment of the original Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. They explore how the controversial dark romance series influenced pop culture, the rise of dark romance in mainstream fiction, and why Freedmight not mean what you think it does. The episode teases what's next in the series, including a parody read of Fifty Shades of Earl Grey by Andrew Shaffer and a full wrap-up comparing the books to the films. Join the Besties for unfiltered reactions, spicy cover art commentary, and plenty of laughs—plus behind-the-scenes chaos from their Fable book club chats. Perfect for fans of romance, satire, and pop culture deep-dives.

It’s Fifty shades of May over here on the Besties and the Books podcast. Welcome back to our spring mini episode series all about the extremely popular yet widely discredited book series: Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James. We’re officially concluding the original trilogy with book three, Fifty Shades Freed. Freed from what exactly, you might ask? And to that, we say… we have no idea.

Start from the beginning??
WATCH OUR 50 SHADES OF GREY PLAYLIST HERE | https://youtu.be/vykksEF9PJw?si=phSGimqOBOXXgfJa

We think that whether you find these books problematic or not, credit must be given where credit is due. The fact that these books have been stigmatized, criticized, and repeatedly knocked down is indicative (we think) of a larger societal problem: misogyny. Because as a society, it seems we just can’t stand it when women are successful… or when they enjoy something. Whether it’s objectively “good” or “profitable” or not.

And don’t miss next week’s final mini episode in this series where we give our final thoughts, cover the parody book Fifty Shames of Earl Grey by Fanny Merkin, and discuss the movies!

We interviewed Callie Hart all about her NYT Bestseller Quicksilver! Watch it here! https://youtu.be/CED5s7qDBdQ?si=8xtIRO1IzX6Rsld4

Check the official Author Interview with Lindsay Straube of Split or Swallow! Now a Barnes & Noble & Amazon best seller titled: Kiss of the Basilisk!  https://youtu.be/fknhocSNIKM

Shop bookish apparel worn in this episode!
Ashley is wearing: “The Suriel” Tee from Amazon | * https://amzn.to/4h2v5im
Liz is wearing “Obey Me” Tee by @darkanddisturbedshop | Use Code: VEGAN10 to save! | https://darkanddisturbedshop.com/products/praise-me-tee?_pos=2&_sid=81592a902&_ss=r

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Chapters

• 0:00 Spoiler Free Intro
• 7:00 50 Shades Freed Book 3 Review
• 9:38 50 Shades Freed Book Summary and Deep Dive
• 14:37 Favorite and Least Favorite Things book 3
• 26:32 Unanswered Questions?
• 30:22 Notable Quotes in 50 Shades Freed
• 35:20 Did this have a problematic or negative impact in the community?
• 43:05 Red Flags
• 45:42 BONUS QUESTION!
• 49:07 50 Shades of Grey Fun Fact!

Transcript

0:03

it's gonna be great welcome to the Besties in the Books podcast i'm Ashley and I'm Liz and today is officially the third episode of our newest mini episode series Fifty Shades of Gray here we are or as we like to call it over here it's Fifty Shades of May yep cuz it is going to be May and here we are here we are covering the last book week three week three yes today we are covering Fifty Shades Freed and all these books by are by Eel James you might be wondering oh Freed oh does she finally get freed of Christian because this book is so crazy well stay tuned and find out no that's not what this is about at all nope we're not in the spoiler section yet but it's coming oh boy it's coming and we'll tell you how we feel about it so don't worry if you haven't read this book yet we're not spoiling it for you quite yet so as you know we started off with our Dark Romance Enters the Chat episode where we kind of kick off our minieries so this time obviously all about dark romance because what did Fifty Shades do to us to the to we the people as a society to form a more perfect union yes of dark romance being more um acceptable i guess you will accepted accepted accepted yes yes accepted within culture life so we talk about that we talk about the history of dark romance and everything like that and yes what Fifty Shades did to pop culture and us and why so we did that and then we did our other two episodes talking about the first Fifty Shades book then we went into Fifty Shades Darker and now we're bringing you freed and then we'll be freed after this no we won't because we got one more two more we got two more episodes for you we have a fun little Are we announcing it now we're announcing it today okay we're going to be doing you know Okay hang on because just like Twilight which if you didn't know Fifty Shades is kind of like loosely based off of Twilight kind of like a fanfic you know if you will so of course just like Stephanie Meyer did where they did the point of view from Edward as well as some other different weird books they uh Eel James wrote Gay's perspective in the following books well we're not doing those okay we're not we've had we've had enough quite frankly we're gonna read a parody book called Fifty Shades of Earl Gay by is it Andrew Schaefer and Fanny Mkin so we'll see how that goes but we heard some good things yep i'm excited to read it i literally just like I clicked it in the fable chat cuz you know how you can sometimes read like little samples and I just read like the first paragraph of the first chapter and it made me laugh out loud and I was like "Okay hopefully this is like a good sign." Yeah yeah good yep and then of course we'll do a wrap-up episode where we talk about you know everything in its entirety as well as the movies versus the books we'll we'll do like a ranking maybe like we did with Hunger Games we'll see we'll see why not yeah it's fun so yeah so today we're talking about Fifty Shades Freed i've got it here for you guys um yeah it's the final don't be deceived by those handcuffs don't be deceived don't be deceived by literally like why oh my god i've never even noticed this okay look look listen there's handcuffs on the cover of this book this is just like the mass market paperback which by the way I'm really glad that I did not invest in special limited edition copies of the hard covers um we'll get into why but they're very hard to find by the way yeah so anyways the handcuffs literally say right here the word stop oh what oh so it was So at this point it's purposely deceiving that's purposely deceiving yeah totally erotic romance mature audience with handcuffs on the front that says stop well we'll be here to tell you stop but maybe not for the reasons you think yeah yeah maybe there's maybe she's like "Help please stop." Everybody stop that's a subliminal subliminal messages is she being held captive to help James out oh my god so anyway okay get off this train we've never read these before or if you guys are new here and you're just popping on to hear us chat about these these books you know this was our first read this is all our in real time experiences so hey um if you want our real real time experiences make sure to go follow along on the Fable chats we'll keep those up for a while um where you can hear all of our chapter by chapter unhinged thoughts with no spoilers and that's over at Besties in the Book Club on Fable yeah sorry that we can't help it at all because we have nothing to do with it but the fables for this book freed and book two are crazy yeah like the chapters are all like weirdly out of order and messed up duplicates so sorry good luck with that we But you'll see if somebody commented so you could you know if you want to see what the comments are and then you can just pick one to comment on and we'll we'll check it out too but for such a popular book I'm like why is this so um crazy it was crazy email Fable but instead we're just going to not do that and talk about it here and hope that someone fixes it someday cuz Yeah maybe they're like "Nobody's reading this anymore it's fine." Yeah like we're over here drowning okay so yeah so first time reads for us and we just wanted to explore you know what this did for the romance genre in general with a focus on dark romance a little bit as well even though at this point in time I think we've pretty much established that we wouldn't consider these to be dark so there we are um but yeah so we're going to kick it off with our spoilerfree star and spice ratings as we do um and then we'll get into the spoiler section from there but before we get into that we just want to say thank you so much for being here dude thanks for being here with all of our shenanigans and thorough thoughts you know we appreciate all you guys make sure to like follow and subscribe anywhere you like to listen to your favorite podcasts including YouTube and you can also check us out over on Instagram and Tik Tok we're at Besties in the Books podcast everywhere except Fable that's the free app you can download if you want to join our virtual book club you can search Besties and the Book Club and come hang out with us yeah we also have monthly reads going on too so we do these mini buddy reads and then we have a monthly you know traditional book club book as well so it's fun it's a fun time yep okay so I'll start this time i again am rating this book three stars i was really hoping that we would rebound back to a four star however that did not occur and the reason why three stars is because I felt like it was very slow paced the spice was frequent but not entertaining and it was not what I thought it would be so three stars again I'm going to give it a four spice frequency alone that is it it's literally due to the frequency of the acts because it did happen a lot but it just wasn't interesting i guess I just blocked it out at this point cuz I'm like I felt like this was the least amount no I feel like it was very consistent like throughout like I feel like it was one of those series where like each one was kind of could have blurred into like one big long book truly this could have been one book one normal size book um yeah honestly yeah I feel like the spice was um it's it's just for chili peppers because of the fact that it was happening often but it wasn't necessarily anything that to write home about what about you three stars as well i've consistently been three stars for each book cuz it's just okay it's just fine yeah you know I get I don't I get why people might have liked it at the time um that it was released cuz 2011 I think was the first one right and we've just I don't know i don't remember we've come a long way so maybe that's part of it too guys you know we've come a lot a long way with spicy scenes and this book 50 Shades Freed had a lot of nothing so and then and then a lot happened real fast at the end there and then that was it so I don't know it was just fine enough what do people say now i hope you're hungry for a whole lot of nothing um this was this was 2012 fifty Shades Freed was 2012 copyright so yeah yeah yeah so we have come a long way and that's good that's you know everything has its place i mean we're looking at 12 years ago for this book 13 for this book you know the first one I think you know it was kind of boom boom boom at what sounds like publishing so hey hey the book the book scene is quite a difference now and maybe some respect goes to this one for paving the way maybe some people read it and were inspired to write better mhm so I see your Fifty Shades and I'm going to raise you a good spicy scene okay so there's my law and order spoiler are up ahead guys spoilers coming tot if you don't want to spoil it well don't worry there's honestly not that much to spoil so hey here we go are we ready for the five sentence summary take me away let's escape let's go okay all right um Christian and Anna go on their 3-week honeymoon to Europe and when they get back Anna starts working as the new editor of SIP because Jack is gone and Christian officially owns the company soon Anna will be the owner it's going to be me one one when Christian is on a business trip Jack breaks into his house and tries to kidnap Anna but she is safely out having drinks with Kate he is apprehended by the security team and put in jail where he eventually gets out on bail with the help of an unknown person even though Christian's security team now has cause to believe Jack was behind the fire at his headquarters the helicopter crash and the high-speed chase oo wait i also have long nails this week and the first week I did it I didn't so it's an extra an extra hindrance yeah not that my abilities are topnotch two two christian surprises Anna by taking the whole crew to his Aspen house where his brother Elliot proposes to Kate and she says yes but when they get home Anna's dad is in a horrible car accident with Joseé and Jose's dad they all end up being fine however oh they all end up being fine however Anna misses her birth control shot appointments and ends up getting pregnant wait a second uhoh uhoh uhoh oh my oh my three three anna tells Christian she's pregnant and he goes into a rage where he disappears to go drink and hang out with Mrs robinson anna is extremely upset so they're barely talking when Jack kidnaps Christian's sister Mia and tells Anna to bring him a $5 million ransom secretly she does so and saves Mia but also shoots Jack in the knee and gets fairly badly beaten in the process christian and his security team come to the rescue and Jack and Elizabeth his accomplice are apprehended sounds like something you'd listen to in a graveyard so that's nice yeah that's great yeah lots of dashes in that sentence okay um after Anna recovers from her injuries Christian apologizes and explains that he now knows he was abused by Elena whose ex bailed Jack out of jail jack was another kid at one of his old foster homes in Detroit who he didn't remember who obviously has been jealous of him his entire life they move into this gorgeous new house and live happily ever after with their son Theodore and a baby girl well I'll do a little happier great job i guess you though you did a great job so you know let me give you a little fiddle jig just feel it guys just feel the music that was great i just wish that I could just start the episode with that you know or just like what if like YouTube just will just pop it in a random spot and people are like "What the hell is this i thought this was a book podcast why is that lady playing the violin like a fiddle?" Oh here we are the epic conclusion to the original trilogy what a time what a time time passed that's for sure time passed not very much time no not at all all of this All of these books by the way are what three months maybe now cuz there's a three-week honeymoon in there i think there was like a month of wedding planning so I think it's about three months maybe four i think it was four months total for the entire trilogy so a summer yeah mhm yeah good luck well hey with Hey with Seattle weather you got to get going right that's true cuz it's going to be raining you know how the rain is up there can't be May forever yeah did Did we Did we address this okay so did we already talk about the fact that like we planned this whole like it's going to be gray it's going to be May thing without starting the books yet so we did not know that the books started in the month of May explicitly like we did not know that what a weird coincidence that's special perfectly aligned it was written in the stars like us weirdos how to sit around and talk about 50 Shades of the Violin and five sentence challenges and all of that hey amazing written in the stars yep so all right Ashley what was your favorite part okay i I liked it was filler so I take this with a grain of salt but it was a fun time g you know reading about them gallivanting around on their honeymoon and visiting Colorado it's chill you know if I if I liked this book I would have liked that part even more because it was a fun little thing to read yeah if you want to read some fluff about people on vacation there you go i kind of tried to separate it i'm like okay this is just a time of vibes so let me just enjoy that time but I did notice that was a little more twilighty right so you have the honeymoon scene and the wedding stuff so hey yeah what was your favorite part Liz i put the nods to Twilight so that and then um their meadow like tell me that wasn't Twilight inspired um the fact that in the last I think like page or two she talks about you know looking out at the view from their new house and she talks about the twilight over the sound and I was like uhhuh so I liked that also honorable mention probably my favorite part in this book from like a haha perspective okay i will never this is like lives rent free in my brain till the end of time now so great so the name of his like security the names of his security details in France phipe and Gaston his his two security guards Philipe and Gaston in France yeah um when I read that I could not stop laughing out loud i was like it's like she couldn't come up with any French names so she was like what do I know that's French like I'm just gonna look at Beauty and the Beast and see what the best I can do is oh my god I was laughing so hard so now I just think about that constantly definitely my favorite part what about your least favorite part we probably have the same least favorite part say it on the count of three one two three surprise calling her stupid oh different but that's all right same thing though same thing yeah cuz he calls her stupid with a surprise pregnancy I was screaming so I do like to have emotional reactions for books but not like this like but not this one i was like "Oh this is the this is what birthed the not liking surprise pregnancy tropes." And then his reaction oh my gosh straight in the trash can straight in the trash can um yeah the surprise pregnancy I did not love i kind of saw it coming though it's like I feel like this you know I don't know it didn't surprise me that that was in there um but yeah what bothered me more than the surprise pregnancy was how Christian responded to it it was terrible calling her stupid yeah like it was just in that moment I was like "Okay." Yeah i've been trying to give Christian the benefit of the doubt this whole time and in that moment I was like "And no more." I think my I think my comment in the fable chat was"Dude didn't want you to sign a prenup great take his money and get out of there." Yeah done i was like "No not worth it." Not cool not cool i get that he was panicking but it's like he's just not emotionally intelligent enough to be like "This is a lot of information i'm freaking out give me a second i got to go for a walk." Oh he handled it so poorly he like literally ran into the arms of his uh assaulter for guidance and help yeah yeah oh that man needs a lot of work a lot of work i know he's already going once a week freaking what is he going to do i don't know but it's I will say though the good that did come out of the fact that he ran into Mrs robinson's arms was the fact that he immediately recoiled from her touch and realize that because now that he's in a quote unquote we'll take this with a grain of salt healthy relationship he's realizing that the relationship that he did have with Elena was really bad and so it's it that was like his light bulb coming on moment so in that way it was good but the way that he dealt with it was very bad yeah mhm yeah so what about your uh favorite character i'm not done talking about this so Okay keep going we've gone all day we've got till four it sucks it sucks because I think unfortunately for that level of emotional maturity it is a very normalized reaction that people have totally that he goes and gets wasted and like ick and I feel bad for her because this is her first relationship she talks about you know she's kissed boys and stuff but this is her first boyfriend you know and so it's like she almost it's that naivity that you see as a 30-some year old watching a 20some year old be like "Girl I mean he's a billionaire but like you could do better you know personalitywise." Maybe she's just thinking like maybe the logic is this like like you know I can fix him because everything because everything else will be easier right it's like you can't have it all time i got time to fix him cuz we don't have to worry about Bunny yeah exactly like I don't have to do anything like I could literally just like my full-time job is just dealing with his emotional mood swings great yeah it it would just scare me so much because it's like uh hello he's not asking if she's freaking out he's he's acting like she trapped him and he's always been like "Don't you know she in the previous books has been worried that people are going to view her for that." And he's the first one to say like "No no no no no." And then immediately he's like "Yes you're trying to basically like you know do this to him on purpose or you're just an idiot and didn't take your birth control shots." Meanwhile like you don't let me have a moment to myself a moment's rest when would I go yeah so well and it's like the reason why I was forgetting was because I was dealing with the fact that my dad was in this horrific car accident and he was like in the hospital and I was dealing with all that stuff like Yeah mhm it was crazy it was weird it was another fever dream moment where I'm like am I taking crazy pills am I reading the same book everybody else but wrote because I thought I saw a spoiler when we were reading this that Christian switches out her birth control or does or takes her birth control away or something without her knowing and traps her with pregnancy and it's like that how that's not what happened at all so I was expecting that to happen that's why the surprise pregnancy in the way that it was was a surprise for me because I was like expecting him to have done that and deal with that problematic thing of you know basically putting placeos into her birth control that's not what happened at all so weird okay so there was that and then Christian's telling Anna about the Eric situation so Eric is Elena's husband originally found out about the affair that she was having with Christian and he beats her and she refuses to press charges whatever i'm like let's not let's not try to victimize Elena here a little bit cuz I felt like it was written in such a way at least it's from Christian's perspective i'm like she was a pedophile like let's not act like it was just a an affair that she found out he his wife his her husband found out about like this is so much worse than that he should have pressed charges you know so I did I had a problem with the entire trifecta of coming after Christian you know i had an issue with Jack Hyde having an issue with him because he was this successful head of what is it like publishing editor he had a good life too so I don't he wrecked it for himself it just doesn't make sense that he would go after Christian right until he gets him fired of course but they make it out to seem like he's always tried to be coming after Christian watching them in the boat yeah uh I think that he just had like an unhealthy obsession with Christian because Christian got adopted and he had to stay in foster care and like I think it's like it's not rational necessarily but I think it's just how he responded you know what I mean yeah so there's that and then I didn't I didn't like Elena's ex-husband Eric coming after him too because I just don't think that that's a normal response in that situation no but he's obviously a bad guy too yeah he Yeah he's obviously a bad guy but it's just like the all these people need serious help because you know what you do you throw your wife in jail for being with a person that's underage you don't attack the person that was underage you know yeah but I mean also if you're someone though who would like break your wife's arms and ribs and stuff then you're probably not like a like your brain isn't functioning in that way right that's true that's true yeah i think that he was just probably a bad guy too maybe she was you know maybe she was with him because he was also really bad a bad person you know what I mean and then he was just mad that she cheated on him and could didn't even care about the fact that it was literally like with a child because he's a bad guy yeah you know this is why these talks are good because it helps me hash out the things that I hated so put some different perspective on it yeah all right we can move forward now okay that's good so did you have a favorite character nope did you i just put the same thing mrs jones Taylor Sawyer i I liked all those side characters they were fine you know i like that Taylor like will go and buy her outfits that's nice but no one that like I really cared about you know um so who is your least favorite character in this book specifically then christian me too yeah without pregnancy reaction man yep that did it i was like did you think this through Eel James cuz this was a happily ever after and you made you must have made a lot of us hate the MMC by the end you know yeah and like that's very offscript for Twilight i'll give her that if she was trying to be different because everybody loved Edward the whole time yeah and I mean you know he was very mature and not possessive and was like "Hey figure it out." Yeah by the end by the end yeah cuz he he definitely grew for sure i feel like Christian supposedly grew but kind of I think he by Yeah is what a mess what a mess yeah so same least favorite character Christian goodbye i'm curious to see how they portray him in the movies because I'm like if he's this unlikable in the movies too i don't know like where do we go from here it's kind of like okay so you're with this guy who sucks happily ever after goodbye you know what I mean it's like weird ending it was weird it was weird so how did you feel when reading this book how did this book make you feel this book made me feel annoyed yeah same that's what I All those reasons what about you you said I said increasingly irritated with Christian and also like this book did not need to be three books like it could have been one book easily maybe two if you wanted to squish two and three together for all that drama you know like one could be of them getting to know each other and then two or three could have easily been one yeah it didn't need to be i feel like with good writing it could have been one book for sure so yeah just increasingly irritating i mean it was only four months yeah exactly oh my gosh um under unanswered questions I just put nope I have none we're good nothing to see here there's nothing left nothing left yeah and that's why I'm like that's interesting that someone might finish these and be like now I want to read it from Gray's perspective i'd be like I don't need to rehash this yeah so I think the next book is called Gray so it's Gray's perspective and it was like kind of cute but I'm not obsessed enough with at all to continue but it was like his perception coming into the Gray family you know and his first Christmas so that was like kind of cute yeah I could see if you loved this series i would definitely recommend continue on because you're you're going to see a different side for sure if you want to see all sides for us it's a no but hey yeah I'm like I just I don't I don't like Christian either i think that's the thing is like by the end of the series I don't like Christian so like I don't need to read things from his perspective cuz I I don't need to find out that I like you dislike you even more it would have been such a minor thing just with the pregnancy situation to have handled it better for it to have been good you know what I mean or or maybe like he didn't even have to handle it better just not as bad as he did i think it was so extreme and it was off character for how he's been too he has like these little moments of possessiveness or in like controlling things but this it went off the rails for sure well because he was responding like a 15-year-old boy would respond to finding out that they're going to become a dad like that's why that's a major yeah um not like a 28-year-old billionaire who literally has all the resources in the world like you'll be fine it's like this isn't going to be hard you're going to have a nanny even like five nannies probably so I was trying to think listening to this i'm like what changes about your life honestly yeah like you have house cleaners you have nannies you have drivers you have like everything possible the resources to put your kid in the best schools or homeschool them or do literally do whatever you want like it's like basically getting a fish feed it you know like an environment for it you know and pay somebody to clean the fish tank like you have the easiest parenting job ever yeah like I think he's worried about like obviously like the emotional impact that he'll have on this kid because he sees himself as being so messed up he's he's scared and that makes sense but like you just because you're scared you don't have to like literally react the way you did it was a choice it was a choice so my next question is uh cuz you guys already know that we're not going to be continuing on and reading things from Gray's perspective we did announce that we're going to be reading 50 Shames of Earl Gay are you excited to read the parody yeah yeah i'm curious yeah i do feel bad in a way because we know now that these books were so different than what they were painted as so I almost kind of you know what I'm saying i feel like a little bit guilty reading another parody it's like we've made a lot of fun but I also don't because that's what we do here we make fun of things whether we like them or not so yeah it's like think about it this way if someone wrote an Acatar parody I would I'd read that and enjoy it too you know what I mean true yeah so I like that's how I'm looking at it for sure yeah yeah it'll be fun it'll be a fun time it'll be a super fun time i'm excited do you have any quotes cringy quotes i have a I have a pity quote it's not crazy pity quote okay so this was Gray when he before he lost it all or maybe it was after I don't know before he lost it all lost his marbles yeah he said "My world was ordered calm and controlled and then you came into my life with your smart mouth your innocence your beauty and your quiet tremendity i don't even know that word to be honest and everything before you was just dull empty and mediocre it was actually nothing." So there you go that's nice it sounds like the less um colorful way to say something that like or that um Edward would have said to Bella like Edward would have said that to Bella but would have made it so much more like elegant and like more timey sounding you know yeah so uh I'll be bringing the important quotes to the table like [ __ ] like [ __ ] troll for example and another round of crackor cuz they just kept coming and they don't stop coming yep uh I loved it so much because she deserves it she deserves to be called a [ __ ] troll like she does and so that's just for anyone who didn't read the series that is how Anna describes um Mrs robinson or Elena so that was good um let's see what else do we have okay so these are well these ones are a little bit more serious so we'll talk more about this when we get into the the red flags but the quotes were this was one that Anna says "At least he's talking to me." So she's like recognizes that his mood swings are really problematic but she's just so grateful that he's like at least talking to her right i was like that rubs me really wrong um he says and I put a star next to this one because I think it's important to note I want you to need me and she says you know she takes that as very like face value of course I need you you know it's like she's looking at that from a 22-year-old's perspective of course I need you i need you with my heart and soul and in my mind red flags are going off because I'm like "No what he's saying is that he wants you to be so dependent on him that you can never leave." Yes and to me that's a super huge red flag because a lot of men actually think that way and unfortunately a lot of women or people in general get trapped in relationships because they are financially dependent on oftentimes the man and cannot leave abusive situations and I didn't like that because of that reason because I don't think that she really understands implications of he now owns the company that you work at he gave you the job that you have i didn't like that yeah you're married to him you now are pregnant with his child like literally I want you to need me like it's not an option for you to not need me and I didn't it just it felt icky to me yeah um and then she says "It occurs to me that I always think of Christian as strong and dominating yet the reality he's so fragile my lost boy and the irony is that he looks upon me as fragile and I don't think I am compared to him I'm strong." And I was like"That's very true also like emotionally speaking for sure." And then she makes this other comment like in the epilogue that Christian grins "My mercurial little boy just like his or no her little boy grins he grins." "My mercurial little boy just like his dad." Well at least he has an excuse he's only two i'm like "So literally you are admitting that he is acting like your 2-year-old son haha." Yeah how fun for you yeah at this point I think that I had such a bad taste in my mouth for Christian that I was like also picking apart everything for reasons to not like him anymore i mean he had the most red flags in this book out of all of them mhm which hey maybe that is pretty like typical cuz we're only on month like four together so the love bombing while it's still happening you know it's like well you might be actually kind of getting to know him for real now i don't know too little too late obviously part of it is is this author trying to keep the Twilight vibes and I'm sure she probably got criticism in book two for not being Twilighty enough you know so they have to figure out how to throw a pregnancy in there and stuff so I just wonder what the author would direction would have gone if it wasn't keeping on Twilight you know or if it hadn't taken on like such a huge influence by this point yeah yeah so you know but yeah so what a mess so now that we're at the end we've officially finished the trilogy we can look at it all as one big picture would you say like that it had a positive or negative impact on the genre in general and you can even talk specifically about this book too but like what do you think yeah i mean I feel like I don't know that my answer would be any different than it has been the last two episodes what about you yeah mine's a little different so you know everything that we've already said I think you know ultimately it had a positive um impact on the genre as a whole so I'm going to stick with that like I I'll die on that hill for sure um my issue with this is that it has psychologically dark themes so I think you go into it and you think that it's going to be about BDSM it's going to have sexually dark themes which I think pretty much all of us in the dark romance or even romance space are pretty used to at this point um and most dark romances do have psychologically dark themes that's fine but I think the issue here is that it normalizes them with a happily ever after and an unclear understanding of this as toxic behavior so that's the issue that I have with this book series specifically book three also yes so it's one thing if you're going into reading a dark romance and you're like you know you read the trigger warnings list and you're like okay we're going to be getting into some really dark you know physical emotional themes great okay I know what I'm getting into um I think that yeah what I just really didn't like about this was that there was a lot of trauma going on for with Christian obviously because of his past but then the problem with that is that he's now passing those behaviors on to his relationship now his marriage probably his kids um but it's like it wraps it all up in this happily ever after bow at the end that's like I just freaked out for a second everything's fine we're going to get married and live in this be or we're married we're going to live in this beautiful house we're going to have a bunch of babies and live happily ever after it's going to be amazing and it kind of I think then just brushes over the fact that it's like no uh his years and years and years of trauma and and emotional and physical abuse was not resolved in 4 months like we're just skimming the surface of how all that is going to affect his marriage and his family probably forever and totally that bothered me yeah i don't think it negatively impact the community in the fact that I mean I didn't hear anybody talking about any of this stuff before no so you know it's one of those sex cells for sure because that's all they made it seem like this book was but it's also it is a it's a disservice to the community and this book to just wrap it up like that because we didn't have people criticizing her for that i think those problematic themes that needed to be criticized and critiqued yeah i mean these happily ever after it's just continuing that issue that is going on within relationships and society you know it's like and it's again she can fix him you know yeah it's normalizing this idea that like you can get with an emotionally unstable man and fix him with your with your Yeah with your um ability to function as a somewhat emotionally intelligent person i think that you know that also puts the burden on women too and I think the difference between like I can fix him haha you know when you're talking about a guy who's clearly unfixable right like you know I can fix him I can but it's like ghost face right it's like we can all joke about that like we know he's a bad guy i think the difference here and the reason why it's insidious is because like it really paints a portrait of like this is a fairly unhealthy relationship not because of the sexual aspects but because of all the other stuff and we're just going to gloss all over that because now they're married and have kids and they're rich i don't know that doesn't sit very well with me yep it sucks because it's like this book was painted as problematic because of the BDSM and Dom aspect that's not why it's problematic no at least not in our opinion yeah there's not even any of that really in these books like past the very beginning of book one and Yeah even and it's all consensual and semicontractual you know and flexible and if anything it's a good gateway to help people with it and then the actual problems were just him as a person without all that yeah it's like normalizing this idea that like women should just put up with it because in the end you know everything will be hunky dory it's like she doesn't know what she's in for she's 22 years old and yeah good luck with that i mean who knows maybe he will deal with all of his issues and everything will be hunky dory and amazing but I think that you know it could have been a very small addition to the book like even just a little paragraph where Anna or Christian or both of them in conversation acknowledge that this is going to be a long journey to healing right where they're like you know we both are bringing different things to the table christian obviously has this trauma but I'm you know Anna's willing to be there for him through the ups and downs because we know this is going to be like a long haul and she says you know things like I love my 50 despite all of his you know whatever she's effed upness or whatever she calls it but it seemed very surface level to me i feel like that could have been addressed in a very small way that would have made a big difference in how I viewed this problem yeah and that's why though dark romance generally speaking has come such a long way because I feel like that's tends to be the focus a lot more now is like how to be better and like work together on those things i'm generalizing of course but it's more often that we see a healthy representation now well I think lots of times people enjoy reading dark romance like someone like me because it can help you process trauma and emotional turmoil because of the way that it's presented in that way and I feel like I mean I can only speak for myself but I don't know that anything about this book would ever help me process any dark things from my past you know and so if anything it would just be like oh okay we're just going to like glaze over all that you know and just be fine in the end i mean just seeing some charges against Miss Robinson would have been helpful some closure yeah yeah some closure on some things would have been so quick and easy to fit in even if she's on a page uh you know limit yeah which I doubt like it could have i doubt yeah obviously I'm giving the benefit of the doubt here but like yeah it would have been would have been better to do as a society so hey so problematic for but not for the reasons we thought and probably you thought if you haven't read these yeah for sure for sure what about red flags or critiques either yours or just the general public i mean I feel like that's everything we just discussed honestly mhm anything else you want to add to it yeah i put the major red flags in this for me were obviously Christian's behavior but we've already talked a lot about that um I put Anna's immaturity and willingness to constantly coalesce or silence herself because of Christian's anger issues so yeah I mean she mentions that often like oh I'm just not going to bring this up right now because I don't know if he's going to be mad oh please don't be mad at me it's like that's actually really not a good that's not good yeah and like you said it's painted in a way we've read books that it's like that dynamic and it's not taken as the reader like she's it's just like we're just supposed to be okay with it too you know yeah mhm it's never really a red flag in the perspective that the author is writing so we see it as an issue because we're in our 30s you know but as a younger reader with less experience you might be like "Yeah yeah you do need to go with the flow you know." Yeah you do need to appease him and silence yourself yeah to make sure that he doesn't get mad at you all day yeah call you stupid yeah so I didn't like that and then I also didn't like that um like sex is a solution quote unquote so it's like you know because of his emotional immaturity it's like the only way that he knows how to fix quote unquote fix anything is um just to have sex and somehow what that smooths it over and now it's fine h Yeah i don't know yeah yeah and since she was like previously a virgin is basically like you know experiencing all of this stuff for the first time it's like literally she's just what's the word that I'm looking for it's like No it's like she's digmatized that's literally what's going on you know that that real word that we all know but no seriously though like that's what's going on imagine it's like you're literally never had sex before and then you meet this guy who's like you know he's only 28 but apparently really good at sex and is like this is your awakening and you and she's getting in real deep you know what I mean like now she's pregnant now they're married like so your role you know so I feel like the sex is a solution thing is just that rubbed me wrong too yeah for sure for sure so at the end of the day that would mean that I am team neither i am no like I can't get on either one of your guys' side what about you yeah same team I'm so glad that's done i do have a bonus question though great okay so you know how Jack calls her and is like I have your sister-in-law give me $5 million sh meet me in three hours okay so stupid so my question to you would be if someone did this to you would you try to get the $5 million or would you try to get help i would literally try to get help yeah right okay i was just making sure maybe that's the 22-year-old talking but she also I don't know that it would be I mean maybe it is that easy but like I feel like she's like "Oh my ID doesn't even match my name but great give me the $5 million cuz I have this other credit card that says my married name on it i don't know it seemed unrealistic to me but Oh and they're not going to call Christian okay so no I would have I may not have called the police immediately because my faith in that getting resolved in a timely manner is low i said what I said um but what do we know we know that extremely rich people usually have a lot of pull and so I'd probably just call Christian and tell him what's going on and he's probably able to mobilize the police faster than calling 911 would be able to do and then try to handle it from that perspective i'm not going literally no I'm not going to go try to get this $5 million and then freaking stick your gun in my pants and like head down and try to like play vigilant stupid duffel bag like I don't know how much money $5 million is let me just take these two duffel bags oh Christian's gym bag will do it's like what is going on yeah that seems I guess I'm not serious enough to be like I would just laugh at him i'd be like "Yeah right okay Jack get out of here hang up." Cuz like they say right a lot of those ransoms are fake anyways you know they have like those spam calls and people say like "I your your son was in a helicopter accident give me $5,000 or he's arrested." I don't know these old people get spam calls yeah Charlie hang up like okay spam call hang up like"Oh crap where do I go from now?" Like"Yeah can't get me." Yeah so funny yeah no call for help come on you don't got it yeah even if it's just like I'm sorry but it's like Christian has got to have ties with the mob like let's just be real he's too rich not to so like just call your mob guys they'll go fix it you know i don't know this seems crazy especially cuz they keep like not wanting to get the cops involved it's like because he's probably part of the mob right yeah like I kept waiting that's what I mean like in the second video we did I thought security team had something and then it was like her assistant like I don't believe that either so if it was one of the security guys that that would have made more sense cuz he's with the her all the time so he would know if she contact that is bad writing that is bad writing it should have been the whole time two stars two stars it should have been because it's like"Oh that sucks he was there the whole time." Or at least the second guy that came in you know i don't remember the his name but yeah sawyer I think whatever yeah tom Sawyer taylor Sawyer um okay i've got some fun facts for us to end this on hit it hit it let's go do you want the stupid first or do you want the real fact first okay let's do the real fact first okay the story of Christian Gay and I think these all came from um Cosmopolitan maybe i can't remember but whatever um the story of Christian Gay and Anastasia Steel has not only stimulated book sales around the world it's also boosted sales of sex toys helping more adventurous sex become mainstream james' novel also impacted sales of things like whips handcuffs paddles and even pleasure beads significantly around the world it seems that couples were more than ready to explore the world of BDSM as the Fifty Shades effect swept through the bedrooms of the world of course it's also credited with causing a rise in sexually transmitted diseases so there's that okay and I was like "Oh that's kind of interesting." So it wasn't just the hardware stores in the rope it was also stimulating the economy if you will hey um so you know that is positive though at the end of the day so awesome okay so these were the stupid facts that I found um so the guy who plays Jamie gosh I'm forgetting his name now but whatever you guys know who he is the guy who plays Jamie in the movies um was inter getting interviewed for I think it was yeah either Cosmo or Vogue or something and he said that he while he never did a full frontal shot in the movies this he said as a guy this is a quote as a guy you put all your essentials in a little bag and you tie it up like a little bag of grapes and then it's tucked away that's literally how described it in an interview bag of grapes capes so thanks for that okay and then um Dakota Johnson used a butt double oh so not her butt it is not her butt just in case you guys wondered about that some good old Fifty Shades of Gray trivia so now when you're watching it you can think well not even i wonder whose butt that is it makes me think of uh Joey in Friends you know when he does a butt double well no he when he has the full frontal shot and he has to come up with all those like um prosthetics yeah good times well here we are we've wrapped it up we're done with the trilogy what a time to be alive yep but hey we've got the parody coming next which I'm excited for that's next guys so if you want to read it with us make sure to join us on Fable if you'd like at besties in the Book Club and come back next week to hear our thoughts all about it are we going to have least part favorite parts best parts favorite characters i don't know it'll be a time yeah have to find out soon i know i haven't mapped that one out yet because I'm not sure how that will go you know what I mean like how hard is it going to go on the parody is it a line by line parody like how many pages is it even i don't know i don't know i think it was between like three and 400 pages maybe so it's not super long but it's still long that's about the same length as the first one so okay all right well we'll be here to report back soon stay tuned yes we will so follow us like follow subscribe anywhere you like to listen to your favorite podcast including YouTube and you guys we'll see you next Friday and Friday next Tuesday tuesdays and Fridays tuesdays and Fridays every day bye