Previously: Grey flipped because Ana took a waverunner alone, which felt both fun and freeing, things he does not enjoy. We let out some Snark Lady Feminist rage when Ana shared her internalized victim blaming. Another chapter, another broken capslock key.
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Sweeney: Ana wakes up to find Grey gone-but-not-really because he was just, you know, casually sitting in the arm chair watching her sleep. He tells her not to panic, speaking to her “like a cornered, wild animal,” which is either a commentary on Ana’s lack of intelligence or the fact that waking up to Christian Grey watching you sleep is terrifying. Maybe both.
Lorraine: Absolutely not. I can’t even joke about this shit; that is terrifying.
…but I like that he’s wearing GRAY! pants. A+
Sweeney: He was watching her sleep so he could listen to her sleep-talking, because that makes it all better and totally not creepy at all. He points out that she’s been worried and jumpy lately, which, you know, given the recent arson situation, duh. But Grey’s there now! All better! And he’s got a surprise for her! He’s little-boy excited about it, for the sake of the pedobear alert.
His surprise is that they’re going to ride a wave runner again and he’s actually going to her allow her to drive! His generosity is too much. She gushes about some French places that are around them on the shore and I get sad again for these poor, unfortunate French places that shouldn’t be mentioned here. Eventually Ana flips it, though.
Lor: It’s pretty fantastic because she tells us aaaaaaall about riding the jet ski just outside of the airport and then get SO SCARED by an approaching plane, she flips the jet ski. Good job, Ana.
Sweeney: That’s a classic Ana move right there.
She’s still quite giddy, and after Grey does his necessary panic, he puns about her being wet. Har. Then it’s time for them to go back and shower because he says so and also no more Ana driving because he says so.
Lor mentioned the paragraph breaks in the last recap. For the vast majority of you who have never suffered through the actual book (and OMG please don’t!) E. L. James either separates time by these extended paragraph breaks or by way of longer breaks, that include a stupid squiggly thing. There is no clear editorial reason for one or the other in the first two books. In this book, however, the latter appeared to have been used exclusively for the Pointless Time Warp. I just wrote a ranty paragraph about how the Pointless Time Warps were flashbacks to things that happened a week ago and there is zero sense in telling the story this way. Then I had to get rid of it, because apparently she can’t even keep that formatting consistent. Which is to say that I thought we were getting another Pointless Time Warp when, in fact, we were not. This is a pointless paragraph, in which I am stalling to avoid the moment where I click back to the actual book.
They’re at Heathrow and Ana’s bummed that they’re going home. Grey makes a murdertastic comment about the arson situation, which appears to be the only reason this airport bit is included. Then they’re in Seattle and Grey is waking her up as they arrive at the house, but in her comments on how long they’ve been traveling she says something about being up for 18 hours straight, which is clearly false since she was just sleeping. Ana Logic.
Lor: She also tells us all of this, about being fake-awake for 18 hours and boo-hoo traveling on first class is hard, and then Grey picks her up and she says he wakes her. UM. WTF. I’m pretty sure you were already awake since you just told us all this other shit in the last two paragraphs. Ana Logic.
Sweeney: Grey insists on carrying Ana over the threshold, and she jokes about taking thirty flights of stairs. He then makes jokes about taking the elevator, because she has put on weight, which I can’t stop to be uncomfortable about because WAIT FOR IT, Y’ALL, there’s more. He gets uncomfortable because she’s regained the weight she lost when she left him. (Emphasis on her leaving, rather than the beating; I’d call that weight loss more the product of PTSD than post-break-up blues.) (Lor: IT WAS FIVE FUCKING DAYS.) Ana points out that if she hadn’t done that, things wouldn’t be the way they are now, which is meant to suggest that he’s less abusive, which is false, but I’m not stopping yet because WAIT FOR IT. He responds, “But I would know I could keep you safe, because you wouldn’t defy me.”
Lor: Happy end of your honeymoon, Ana! Your husband wishes you were even more okay with abuse than you currently are, because then you wouldn’t defy him and do stuff like ride a jet ski all by yourself. Have fun in your life.
Sweeney: As an added bonus, Ana is a little bummed because “He sounds vaguely regretful.” Note that because this is Ana, she’s not bothered by the reminder that she married a controlling psychopath; she’s bummed that he’s upset! It would require more than one post per chapter to actually break down all the serious red flags we encounter, so I don’t have much more to say than a slew of rage gifs. Neither does Ana, actually, who just turns this whole thing into a big fucking joke about how much they both LOVE when she defies him because it gives them excuses for Grey to punish her. These crazy kids are hilarious!
They actually complete the elevator ride without stopping to fuck, but in continuing traditions, Grey busts out the champagne as soon as they reach the apartment because he decides Ana needs another drink after this conversation about what an atrocious bag of dicks her new husband is. (Lor: Plus, she is SO fat now.) Then they do get to the sex of course, but it’s a fade to black deal, because someone was feeling merciful.
Ana lies awake wondering how their relationship happened so fast, and I laugh partly because we had to include a calendar in our FSD wrap-up just to make sure everyone understood the absurd timeline of this series. And yet, these books feel like they are dragging on impossibly long. It probably doesn’t help that we’ve now been recapping four times as long as this relationship. (No seriously, Lor’s first FSoG post went up just over a year ago.)
She blathers about getting to watch him sleep and Complete Works of Charles Dickens her subconscious is still annoyingly reading and the impending doom of having to go back to work and go A WHOLE WORK DAY without seeing Grey. Except LOL because he bought her company so we should all start placing bets on how long it takes for them to contrive to have them work from the same office.
Lor: Drinking bets! Shots for everyone if they don’t ever actually do work, yay!
Sweeney: The following morning they are going to brunch at his parents house and rather than just going there, E. L. James has to include stupid, pointless car banter, but I’ll spare you.
Lor: Just pointing out that in addition to being super fat, she’s also not feeling like herself. Is the spawn of Satan growing in her belly already? Mother fuck.
Sweeney: I didn’t mention it at all, because I was trying to pretend it wasn’t so, but yes, this chapter is littered with allusions to her inevitable pregnancy. Never mind, that the book is probably going to operate on the Twilight deal that she got pregnant on her honeymoon and is therefore less than a week pregnant. Apparently it’s also going to develop at Twilight pregnancy speed.
At brunch, Ana’s internal monologue is so spastic and all over the place that even she comments on it. I assume that there is some sort of conversation going on, but because the percentage of people involved who are Ana and Grey is so low, she can’t be bothered to pay attention. Instead she’s annoyed that Grey set up a meeting with Gia, the lady architect who is obvs in love with Grey, lamenting (rightfully so) the fact that her husband called her fat the previous day, and some other boring shit. Grey suggests dragging her out to the boathouse for punishment if she doesn’t stop brooding, because that’s the obvious solution to that problem. You’re having feelings? Time for a beating! It’s a day that ends in “y”? Time for a beating! Kate is “eyeing them suspiciously” because she can’t possibly find anything more fascinating than these two.
Eventually Grey sits down at the piano and sings quietly while he plays, which causes everyone to shut up because of his musical skillz. Ana is confused because that’s her usual state. It turns out that ONLY ANA has ever had the ENORMOUS PRIVILEGE of hearing Grey sing, and Mama Grey tears up, probably at the realization that this is another ~*magic fix*~ for her miserable shit of a son, achieved by some girl he’s known for a hot second.
Lor: See the slight of hand? He threatens Ana with a beating because she had feelings, BUT LOOK! HE SINGS IN PUBLIC NOW. His momma is crying! Clearly, he’s changed and defenders of this book have a piano performance to stand on.
Sweeney: All of those people are still the worst, but I do appreciate that sentence.
They leave and Grey is now going to let Ana drive his car! This is such a shocking turn of events that Inner Goddess requires a wardrobe change. THEY ARE MARRIED. THIS SHOULD NOT BE A BIG DEAL.
Lor: Grey “jokes,” “If you dent it, though, I will take you into the Red Room of Pain.” No pressure, Ana! Just try and remember that he sings in public now!
Sweeney: Ha! Grey tells the best jokes!
Ana is as incompetent as we would expect while driving. Grey gets mad when she goes so fast that she ditches the car with Red Ranger and Sawyer. Since Grey’s evil possessive nonsense must always be proven right, Grey then gets a phone call about how they’re being followed. AND THEN THEY GET IN A FIERY CRASH AND DIE. They know they’re being followed because the follower is incompetent and using a car that everyone can tell just by glancing that it has false license plates. Wut?
Ana miraculously turns into a gifted race car driver, even though she was struggling with the clutch on the vehicle a hot minute ago. She loses the following car fairly easily and the security car catches up to it. Then Grey puts his call with them on speaker so that they can coach Ana about where to go. This is all an effort to make this a suspenseful high speed chase scene, but it fails as miserably as we all expect by now.
Lor: Mostly because it isn’t scary to be chased by a car if you have a fucking security detail also following you. Because of, you know, SECURITY.
Sweeney: But they are driving, Lor! At high speeds! The suspense!
To prove how treacherous this all is, there’s a lot of description of swerving and Ana being directed some sort of side route home, which ultimately confuses her, as most things do. They make it back to the garage, but the car that followed them is now casing the building. Grey orders Red Ranger and Luke Sawyer — whose first name we learned during the car chase, a discovery we spent a senseless amount of time on — to follow the stalker car.
Ana cries and then begs for sex. Somewhere in there, Grey ends the phone call with security, which seems unwise to me, since he knows the stalker car is just outside the building, BUT WHATEVER.
They have sex in the car, and it’s filled with a lot of really weird descriptions of body movements that are less sexy than excessively logistical. She’s trying to explain to us how all the limbs could possibly fit and work in the way she’s insisting they do, but it doesn’t really make that much sense and in the end is (1) not remotely hot, in spite of Ana’s repeated insistence that it is -and- (2) a reminder that E. L. James is in possession of neither a face nor a body.
Lor: It’s also grossly unsexy because (1) Grey mentions how hot she looks when she cries AND REALLY? -and- (2) right before the sex scene we’re told Ana wipes her snot all over her hand and then on Grey’s shirt. Snot trails leading to sex. Okay, EL.
Sweeney: It’s not really surprising, though, that Grey is really into the way women look when they cry.
They get out of the car and Grey calls his security team to figure out what’s going on. We learn that the stalker driver was female, and also some bullshit about how Luke Sawyer is ex-FBI, and used the term “unsub” for “Unidentified Subject,” and I’m going to call this detail either bullshit or the product of a two second Google search. I don’t care enough to do the latter to confirm. Either way, it’s a very stilted bit of information, meant to make the reader believe that E. L. James put some real thought and research into this. Which, you know, LOL.
Another car pulls into the garage. They loiter long enough to have to ride in the elevator with this person who is a new neighbor that just moved in. He’s also some sort of Christian Grey fanboy, but Grey is a total dick to him, as one would expect. Once he leaves, Ana is pleased to have met a neighbor, but Grey is just annoyed because there was a penis-wielding human within five feet of his wife. Ana laughs at him for this, which reminds Grey of her general insubordination, probably because he didn’t give her express permission to breathe that day. This means it’s time for rough sex. In the next chapter.
Lor: Dammit.
Murmur Count – 14
Whisper Count – 15
Favorite comment last post: “Men can smell like: pine, amber, leather, moss, coffee, myriad fragrant African woods, ocean, musk, tobacco, whiskey, cut grass, lemon, lavender, fresh turned dirt (shut up; it’s awesome), and a host of other delightful scents, in various combinations, and the right mix on the right guy will turn an average Joe into your particular version of sex on a stick. But every time I see some variation of “he smells like Christian,” I inevitably think the man smells like a ham-strung, bleeding, lion-ravaged supplicant whose pain and suffering are used to entertain stadiums full of Romans. Or, more concisely, already rotting meat.” – Reba
Next time on Fifty Shades Freed: We are probably returning to the Red Womb of Pain. Sorry, Lor. Find out for sure in Chapter 06.
Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
