Sorry for the lack of updates. In the big computer crash of ‘12 I lost my copy of ‘Master of the Universe’, and retrieving it is turning out to be quite a challenge. 

On a different note, are you fucking kidding me?!

Francesca Arno has been commissioned to create a grand centerpiece painting for the lobby of Ian Noble’s new skyscraper. It’s at a cocktail party in her honor that she first meets him—and the attraction is immediate for Francesca Anastasia. It’s also bewildering. She’s not used to such a wholesale sexual response to a stranger. Enigmatic, darkly intense, with a commanding presence, Ian Christian completely unnerves her. And she likes it.

For Ian, she’s the kind of woman he can’t resist—one that comes all too rarely: a true innocent. But he can sense in her a desire to open up, to experiment, to give herself to the fantasies of a man in control. The first kiss, the first caress, the first challenge for a woman who craves what she’s never had—a man who gets what he wants.

And it doesn’t stop there. 

Bared to You is narrated in first person by Eva Tramell Anastasia Steele, a recent graduate who has just moved to New York Seattle to begin work as an assistant to an ad agency executive publishing house executive. Along for the ride with Eva is her best friend and roommate Cary Kate, who is gorgeous, sweet, and bisexual.

The weekend before she is to start work, Eva goes to the Crossfire building, where she will be working, in order to familiarize herself with it. She loses her balance while helping another woman retrieve change she dropped, and a hot, charismatic man comes to her aid.

The man, Eva learns later, is Gideon Cross, the millionaire who owns not only the Crossfire building but other properties around the city as well. Gideon Christian is as unwittingly hot for Eva Ana as she is for him, and he pursues her relentlessly. But although part of Eva would love nothing more than to tumble between the sheets with Gideon and f–k his brains out, she is put off by the businesslike way Gideon tries to bring this outcome about.

If this isn’t plagiarism, I don’t know what is. 

I’ll admit I haven’t read either of these books, nor do I intend to, but I’ve spent much of this evening reading about them and guess what? Gideon, the male lead in Bared to You, is already a CEO of a multimillion company at the age of twenty-eight! Sound familiar? And Eva, Gideon’s female counterpart, is completely unaware of how beautiful she really is! Sound like someone we know (and loathe)? 

Every woman and more than one man takes note of Gideon’s hotness. Eva marvels at his magnetism almost every time we see Gideon through her eyes, which is pretty often.

Now where have we heard that before? So much for beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Oh, and also according to dearauthor.com:

Gideon is also amazing in bed, both in his unusual stamina and in his ability to give Eva multiple orgasms. 

And apparently this Gideon chap is a mercurial control freak to boot:

Instead, his controlling tendencies (investigating Eva, insisting she call him or talk to him, leaving multiple messages on her phone) repelled me, and I was equally put off by the way he blew hot and cold with Eva.

I don’t even…

In case you were were curious about Because You Are Mine, let me assure you that there seems to be a legitimate plethora of similarities from that corner of the woods, as well. 

Francesca feels out of place wearing her hand-me-down clothes in the new Noble Enterprises building’s expensive restaurant amongst the well-coiffed wealthy. 

Why, please tell me more. 

She just doesn’t fit.

Who wants to wager that she’ll run off to listen to ‘Misfits’ by Amy Studt?

It’s evident Francesca Arno is completely unaware of her beauty and innate sexual appeal, which mystifies Ian as do her gauche responses and mannerisms. 

I bet that is evident, and abundantly so. 

We are given more insight into Ian’s temperament, his need for control as well as his recognition and acceptance that he is a full-blown sexual dominant. 

A look inside his private, inner sanctum shows that Ian Noble is into some serious kink.

A look inside his playroom, you mean? 

I never thought I’d feel bad for chastising E. L. for plagiarizing Stephenie Meyer.

Maybe that’s why he’s trying to hide it from your view?

When I’m done criticizing everything else that is wrong with this book, I will make a compilation post providing incontrovertible proof that Edward is the worst CEO ever. 

This quote will be exhibit A. 

Well, I don’t know. Try saying, “Sorry, I’m just reading the questions”?

We get it. Bella is hot and bothered. 

I love how blatant consumerism is presented as an ideal lifestyle in this book. It’s quite a groundbreaking take on the subject, given that most of the books that deal with consumerism deem it to be ‘empty’ and ‘superficial’.  

Most people living in the 21st century have a firm grasp of the ‘virtue of ideal’ that is giving to the poor. Thank you for underestimating your readers’ cognitive functions and spelling it out, though.

“I’m a very wealthy man, Miss Swan and I have expensive and absorbing hobbies.”

A few paragraphs later…

“We can’t eat money, Miss Swan, and there are too many people on this planet who don’t have enough to eat.” 

If you really cared about starving children in third world countries, you would be able to enjoy some more mundane, less expensive hobbies. 

‘Does Edward have a heart or not?’ shouldn’t be an adequate plot to carry a triology, much like how ‘Does Edward have a soul or not?’ shouldn’t be an adequate plot line to carry a “saga”.

I think everyone has gathered by now that Edward’s beauty is paramount.

But don’t let that stop you from reminding us every other sentence over the next 600 pages.

Unless Bella’s has an hitherto undisclosed aptitude for Legilimency, she has no possible way of knowing what kind of thought made Edward’s eyes ‘alight’.

Unfortunately for his fifty thousand employees, Mr. Edward Cullen seems to lose his sense of responsibility once he introduces Bella to his red room of pain. 

He’s giving you textbook answers to your textbook questions. I fail to see how saying this made him sound like a control freak to your ears.

To my ears he simply sounded like a douchebag.

Given that you all but quit your job upon successfully seducing Bella, I guess your stocks are in for quite the drop.  

I don’t even know where to start.