Fifty Shame of Earl Grey is Full of Laughs and Snorts

Fifty Shames of Earl Grey by Andrew Shaffer

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


When this book landed in my arcs I was was stoked to read it even though I am one to admit that actually enjoyed
Fifty Shades of Grey.  I know, I know...  It's one of my fifty shames.

Fifty Shames of Earl Grey is a wonderful parody of the Fifty Shades trilogy.  It has everything including, but not limited to:

1.  Shopping at Walmart
2.  Butt Chugging
3.  Brony Fanfic (based on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic)
4.  Tom Cruise
4.  Helicopters, stock cars, and F-14s
5.  Nose picking
6.  LARPing
7.  Jersey Shore
8.  16 and Pregnant
9.  Magical stalking
10. Out of season McDonalds' cuisine such as the McRib and Shamrock Shakes

Shaffer starts out strong with lots of laughs in the first part of the book.  I was snorting along to this one, and woke my husband up:

"The Earl Grey Corporation headquarters in downtown Seattle is a ginormous 175-story office building that juts into the cloudless sky like a steel erection.  I walk through the glass doors and into the lobby, which is floor-to-ceiling glass and steel.  This fascinates me to no end, because buildings in Portland are made of grass and mud."

There are more where that came from, which is why I was disappointed when the laughs began to lag towards the middle and end of the book.  It's not to say that it wasn't amusing, because it was.  I just couldn't help feeling like I was watching the parody, Scary Movie, especially when Earl Grey kept popping up magically wherever Anna happened to be. For instance, he appears behind a bar (think Tom Cruise in Cocktail), a Starbucks bathroom stall, from under Anna's bed, Walmart, and other ridiculously laughable places.

The book moves from laugh out loud mockery of Fifty Shades,its character similarities to Twilight and the legalities of fanfic, to more slap-stick/situational comedy that pokes fun at moments in the book such as the car chase scene, to Christian Grey's eating issues.

Overall, this book is a humorous parody of the million-dollar-per-week pop culture phenomenon.  Though it lags at times, it still held my attention and kept my husband waking all through the night.

ARC provided by Perseus Books Group in association with NetGalley.com



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