Not Fifty Shades of Grey, We Promise: Bared To You Chapter One

Bared To You is (presumably) a Fifty Shades of Grey clone, or at the very least an imitator. So you’d think they’d maybe not want to draw your attention to the fact that you’re reading the knockoff version because your grandma got you the wrong one and for some reason is buying you erotic novels because she’s just a really weird grandma? Nope! Check out the praise on the first page of this novel:

Bared to You has an emotional feel similar to Fifty Shades of Grey.

Oh fuck.

In fact, if I were to recommend any book today to readers who enjoyed Fifty Shades of Grey and were looking for another book like it, this would be the first one I would offer

It is shameless and it gets worse.

While it is true that Bared to You has much in common with Fifty Shades of Grey,

Seriously? No. I don’t give a fuck how this sentence ends, you cannot start praise with an excuse.

The secondary characters are just as flawed as Eva and Gideon

Is this supposed to be a good thing?!

Oh, and did I mention the sex is hot? Page-meltingly hot.

Since you’re talking about paper, the word you’re looking for is “burning”.

It literally blew my mind and after finishing it, I wasn’t able to stop thinking about it!

It literally blew your mind? Literally? So this book either a) made your head explode and now you are dead, in which case you probably have stopped thinking about it, or b) fellated your consciousness.

I couldn’t find a picture of the latter in Lego.

I think we’ve seen enough. Let’s get this over with.

Chapter One

Remember how Ana in Fifty Shades of Grey fawningly describes every single character’s physical appearance? Well, here’s Bared to You‘s Eva describing her roommate (because it is always the roommate) three paragraphs into the novel:

We’d been unpacking for days, yet he still looked amazing. Leanly built, dark-haired, and green-eyed, Cary was a man who rarely looked anything less than absolutely gorgeous on any day of his life.

Well, it’s different from Fifty Shades of Grey in that 1) the roommate is male, and 2) the roommate is not sick. Additionally, Eva starts a new job tomorrow (so is probably not in college), and has just moved from San Diego to Manhattan.

In my dreams, I’d imagined living in a walkup in Brooklyn, but being a dutiful daughter, I found myself on the Upper West Side instead. If not for Cary living with me, I would’ve been miserably lonely in the sprawling apartment that cost more per month than most people made in a year.

What… what does this even mean? She’s being a dutiful daughter by living somewhere more expensive? Do her parents pay for her apartment? Boo fucking hoo, Eva!

Eva walks around New York and describes her fascination and newness with the city, as well as her new job which is an assistant at a publishing company advertising agency. We learn that she took this job that her stepfather is a megafinancier who wanted to use his connections to get her a super duper 1% job, but Eva got all “WE ARE THE 99%” and got an entry-level position on her own terms. But still totally accepted the expensive apartment. FUCK NEPOTISM.

Pretend this picture I took is in New York and not Amsterdam.

Also her dad is still around but didn’t marry her mother. So, yeah, only just barely not very Fifty Shades. I’m keeping a close eye on you, Bared to You.

Anyway, ready to meet the new Christian Grey?

The custom three-piece suit hit more than a few of my hot buttons, but it was the tall, powerfully lean body inside it that made it sensational. Still, as impressive as all that magnificent maleness was, it wasn’t until I reached the man’s face that I went down for the count.

I wonder if she can describe this any better than Anastasia Steele?

Wow. Just . . . wow.

Well, I could hope. Suddenly the mysterious man gives Eva a look. Remember how when Ana first met Christian Grey, it was when she fell over?

Reacting purely on instinct, I shifted backward. And sprawled flat on my ass.

He walks over to help her up, and she spends an entire page describing literally every single detail of his face, article of his clothing, and how he smells. But the real gem comes at the end.

His voice was cultured and smooth, with a rasp that made my stomach flutter. It brought sex to mind.

But then it gets better.

I thought for a moment that he might be able to make me orgasm just by talking long enough.

OMG JUST LIKE CHRISTIAN GREY. So it looks like Bared to You is gonna have voice-activated orgasms too. I really hope this is the last time I ever have to read about a male character that can make women orgasm just by talking. It’s going to start to get to me soon.

There is already a lot not going in my favor, I don’t need voice activated orgasms to be a thing.

She goes on for another three or four pages literally just describing how attractive he is and how much she wants to fuck him and how there’s all this energy between them you know??? But we can save a lot of time with this:

Five minutes with Mr. Dark and Dangerous, and I was filled with an edgy, restless energy.

Or possibly this:

It was my I’m-ready-to-fuck look and it had absolutely no business being on my face now.

Then Eva goes to the gym and a guy approaches her about taking self-defense classes with him. Okay.

Eva comes back home and Cary’s been cooking and then suddenly it gets pretty depressing.

No one would know from looking at him that he’d spent his childhood bouncing between his drug-addicted mother and foster homes, followed by adolescence in juvenile detention facilities and state-run rehabs.

Eva tells him about Mr Sexy Pants and effectively sums up five pages of the novel in twenty words.

“Tall. Dark. Lean and built. Blue eyes. Filthy rich, judging by his clothes and accessories. And he was insanely sexy.”

And then something terrifying happens.

My belly fluttered as it had when Dark and Dangerous touched me.

I can’t decide if it’d be better or worse if instead of Fifty Shades‘s Ana and her subconscious and inner goddess, we instead have Eva and her belly.

Eva and Cary talk about how the man was totally a bad boy, but bad boys can be fun, but you can also just fantasize about them. Alright. Also apparently Cary’s a model. Also apparently Eva’s step-dad is no longer married to her mom, and she’s remarried to another super rich dude. I can see this becoming a thing.

Eva goes to her first day at her new job. Unlike Fifty Shades, her boss isn’t super obviously a massive creep. All seems perfectly normal until she goes to the elevator to leave for home, when who’s in the elevator?

So the question you’re all waiting for…

But Is It Better Than Fifty Shades of Grey?

Fifty Shades starts with an entirely too convenient chaos theory moment (what if Kate wasn’t sick? WHAT IF?) and Ana annoyingly describing the appearance of every man, woman, and sandstone building. But Eva matches how annoying this is by spending that same amount of time describing someone she can only describe as Mr Dark and Dangerous; at least Ana was asking him his name and if he was gay and stuff! And unbelievably stupid trumps annoying.

The Winner This Round: Fifty Shades of Grey

Advertisements

3 comments

  1. Caitlin Reply

    you should have put an ‘other’ option on the quiz….i would have said it was the slender-man. he is always there just when you don’t expect him, such as in the elevator

  2. biancaeb Reply

    I love how Eva’s all like ‘I don’t care about money, I stand on my own feet, y’all,’ then one of the first words out of her mouth when describing Not-Christian are ‘filthy rich.’ So are you a gold-digger or not, stop pretending you’re one of the ‘little people’ you inconsistently try to be in society with your spacious apartment on the Upper West Side and perfect job straight out of Uni!

    You can also see me rant about Bared to You on my blog: http://writerlingworks.wordpress.com/2012/11/02/bared-to-you-the-next-fifty-shades/ *shamelessadvertisement!*

    Otherwise, I love the reviews on Bad Books, Good Times! Well done! 😀

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.