When it comes to reading books I tend to stick to familiar territories such as crime thrillers and the odd political biography, something I can get my teeth into and something that keeps me on the edge of my seat. I also like the odd chick-lit novel but I am a bit choosy as to who the author is and tend to stick to 3 or 4 of whom I have read a lot of.

Just over a week ago a friend of mine messaged me and said I had to read 'Fifty Shades of Grey' because I would love it and that it was the best book she had ever read. A bit of a tall order I thought, I mean the best book you have ever read? The Hobbit, 1984 or my very own favourite The Hungry Caterpillar, can a book really be better than any of those? However it seems that Alice wasn't the only one reading this book, it turned out that almost every female friend I have got has either read it or was and is reading it and were quite excited by it given the comments and hash tags across the land of Twitter, so I went onto Amazon and quickly downloaded it onto my Kindle. Once downloaded, I was faced with a synopsis of a man and a woman falling in love in a book which promised to be "Romantic, liberating and totally addictive, this is a novel that will obsess you, possess you, and stay with you for ever", well I had to read on to see if that was at all true.

As the story begins, we are introduced to Miss Anastasia Steele, a literature student and her flatmate Miss Katherine Kavanagh. The story is told through the eyes of Anastasia whom we come to know as Ana and she is to travel over one hundred and sixty miles to interview an entrepreneur for the student newspaper for Kate (Katherine) who has come down with a bout of flu. The entrepreneur we get to know as Mr Christian Grey the CEO of Grey Enterprises Holdings Inc, the man who also happens to be a major benefactor to the University that both Ana and Kate attend. Both Ana and Kate are total opposites of one another, Kate very outgoing, confident clearly beautiful and popular with the boys and Ana who is unaware of her beauty is a virgin, awkward with herself and comes across as clumsy.

Upon their very first meeting, Ana, who is totally unprepared for the interview and bumbles her way around seemingly embarrassed is something of a mystery to Mr Grey, he takes great delight in her embarrassment though the chemistry between the two of them is well and truly alight. As Ana questions Christian, using the notes given to her by Kate, as the reader you are almost squirming in your seat with her as question after question becomes more embarrassing. After the interview it is clear Ana cannot get the rather good looking Grey out of her mind and as we are introduced to other parts of her life, mainly her part time job at a local hardware store, it is by chance (or is it) that the very same Christian Grey once again wanders into Ana's life and throughout the whole scene in the hardware store as Christian flirts outrageously with Ana buying what seem to be rather odd pieces of equipment, once again a meeting is set up for the two of them to meet at a photo shoot to accompany the interview he has already done.

As we travel through the book, there is infact a storyline, despite most people claiming it is mummy porn and erotica, the underlying story is a story of love. Yes there is a lot of eye popping kinky deviant sex, which is refered too as 'Kinky f**kery' and the scenes themselves are very descriptive and no doubt the media will soon hop onto a bandwagon claiming a baby boom is due to women reading this book. But the love story itself is one which made me laugh, cry and tutting like someone had been rapidly feeding me budgie seed because more than anything I wanted Ana and Christian to get together and I didn't want it to be just about sex, which for Christian it is, even though he is so in love with Ana, he just doesn't know it or want to accept it and as a reader we all know it and want to shake him silly.

As the books continues and we learn more about Christian and his humble beginnings, his personality and lifestyle is what makes him 'Mr Fifty Shades', a description Ana uses frequently to refer to and describe Christian. We also see Ana, who is very inexperienced with men, not forgetting she is a virgin, clearly fall in love with Christian, I mean who wouldn't fall in love with a man who is mega rich, stunningly good looking and a bit of a devil between the sheets? There is however one issue which stands between them - Christian doesn't want a girlfriend, he wants a lover but not just any lover, he wants a contract bound submissive and it is this side of Christian that we are introduced too - Mr Dominant, but can Ana accept Christian in this way or is it too much for her? It comes as no secret that Christian is very much into BDSM - which stands for bondage, domination, and sado-masochism and he has a playroom full of toys within which his 'other side' comes to life and it is this that has caught the headlines and grabbed everyone's attention, rather than the two people falling in love.

I wont ruin the story for those of you have haven't yet succumbed to the feeling of being left out and wondering what the hell we are all on about, but trust me, if you haven't read this book then blooming well go and buy it, download it, beg, borrow or steal it because you are missing out!

Having read the trilogy I now fully understand the hype surrounding this book and am totally and utterly obsessed with Christian Grey and am debating re-reading them from start to finish at a much slower pace. But whilst this book is very filthy and erotic, for me it is a love story above all else, one that had me in tears of happiness and frustration and I was so engrossed in the story I simply couldn't put my Kindle down, all I wanted to do was read because I had to find out what was going to happen and within three days I had completed the trilogy and I haven't read a set of books this quickly since I was introduced to Twilight, which feels like it was years ago and the Edward and Bella love story is nothing compared to this one.

Since reading the trilogy I have found out that Fifty Shades of Grey was initially titled 'Master of the Universe' which is a bit of an odd title and it clearly is not about He-man! Anyway, the title was soon changed to 'Fifty Shades of Grey' and having read all three books in the trilogy in as many days; I am now suffering with a complete withdrawal from Christian Grey and am waiting with baited breath or a hinted at fourth book and perhaps a film adaptation.

So if you haven't read any of these books, you can find them on Amazon, all three books are placed at number 1-3 respectively for the Kindle downloads and if you want the actual book then you can find them in most supermarkets and bookstores but don't feel you need to be embarrassed in purchasing the book because this is one very special case of not judging a book by its cover - Fifty Shades of Grey simply features a tie on the front cover and not something Erotic, that said everyone is reading it anyway, so by now most people know what it is all about.

Laters, baby!