Was there a particularly huge tax bill that we didn’t know about?

EL James adds another bow to her string with this second instalment of her Fifty Shades of Grey series rewritten from the viewpoint of its brooding hero, Christian Grey.

Fans who haven’t yet got Darker have plaintively asked that readers don’t post spoilers online, which, given the original book was published in 2012, feels a bit like people getting cross on reading that Rosebud is actually a sledge.

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James’s original books began as fan fiction about Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series and, like Meyer’s, have become films.

Light-hearted shagging
“If the original books were easy to get through, and Grey felt like a woodpecker had hit find and replace on a work document of Fifty Shades, Darker feels as though James has left the game entirely.”

Yet James appears to struggle with new ideas, and so it’s back to spinning Christian Grey’s all-powerful BDSM-loving billionaire, who, in Anastasia Steele, managed to find the only 21-year- old girl in the Western hemisphere without an email address or more than one and a half friends, and subsequently succumbed to the enchantments of her being really quite boring.

In this new take on book two, Christian and Anastasia rekindle their romance and essentially argue a lot in between some light-hearted shagging over a pot of Ben and Jerry’s and, most memorably, a half-made stir fry (literally nobody mentions this aspect of BDSM in Ann Summers).

James’s original trilogy was addictive in its awfulness. She was on tricky footing for her first reimagining, Grey, which confused lengthy boardroom scenes for character development, and italics for personality.

Fist-in-mouth flashbacks
These are thankfully in shorter supply in Darker (although dear Lord, who knew one man could be so enthused about solar-powered tablets?), and while we still get the fist-in-mouth bad flashbacks to Christian’s childhood with his “crack whore” mother, who calls him Maggot, there are more interesting ones – this is to use the term in its loosest sense – featuring his adoptive family, and the woman who introduced him to a sub-dom relationship as a teenager.

“After Freed (even the titles are the same, with Fifty Shades of cut out) is released in two years, EL James must face up to the fact that she either invents a new world, or finds a more interesting way to spin Grey’s world.”

If the original books were easy to get through, and Grey felt like a woodpecker had hit find and replace on a work document of Fifty Shades, Darker feels as though James has left the game entirely.

Either she has been edited very strongly (although one must ask, why start now), or she has heard a few episodes of My Dad Wrote a Porno and is feeling mortified. Belinda Blinked had nothing on James’s previous books, but the overwrought language that her fans adore, and that give me the will to carry on reading out of sheer hilarity, is largely absent.

There is the occasional squeal of joy to be had in Christian’s exposes on car purchasing (“What is it with you and foreign cars?” “The Germans and the Swedes make the safest cars in the world, Anastasia”), and a page-long flashback in which Christian’s grandfather teachers him about the importance of apple tree maintenance is full-on cuckoo.

Twitching and concurring
Christian makes a “lascivious invasion”, (presumably after half an hour of browsing thesaurus.com) and, yes, his penis is still twitching, agreeing and concurring like a biological Statler and Waldorf, but overall James’s copy feels distinctly toned down.

This simply leaves us a boring plot and far too much talk about Anastasia’s coy refusal to eat food, which doesn’t get any less disturbing five books in. James describes “her eyes still impossibly large in her beautiful, thinner, sadder face,” – this is irresponsible to both readers and to adjectives.

Darker isn’t bad in the way that, say, the film The Room has become a cult hit. Rather James’s golden goose is getting more tarnished with each rewriting.

After Freed (even the titles are the same, with Fifty Shades of cut out) is released in two years, EL James must face up to the fact that she either invents a new world, or finds a more interesting way to spin Grey’s world.

I don’t know about Anastasia, but my inner goddess cannot take any more.

“We’ve chased the dawn, Anastasia. Now the dusk.”

Oh be still our hearts; Darker was everything we were hoping and wishing for. There is something about the male POV which truly ensnares our heart and none more so than the voice of Christian Grey. We thought we knew all there was to know about him; his troubled heart and mind, his controlling ways and his boyish vulnerability. The true extent and depths of his mercurial ways though really takes the centre stage in this, our favourite instalment in the original Fifty Shades series.

“Appearances can be deceptive. I’m not fine. I feel like the sun has set and not risen in five days, Ana. I’m in perpetual night here.”

Oh Mr. Grey; you really do doubt that love is all around you. Through snippets from the past we experience the sadness, the sporadic rays of light, the darkness and ultimately the love which surrounds this wonderful and enigmatic man. A man whose life is changing through the insistent love and the strength of a good woman, the wonderful Anastasia Steele.

‘Baby, you read me like one of your books; except I’m not the hero. I’ll never be the hero.’

Oh but you are Mr. Grey, you’re our hero. A hero who protects those he loves with all that he is and all that he has. A hero who shows compassion, humility and patience. A hero who stole our hearts years ago yet once again reaffirmed that special place which still truly belongs to Christian Grey.

‘I can do this. I can live with this. I must. I need to protect her and her vulnerable heart. I take a deep breath. I can do this.’

Oh yes, we know this story and we know it well, through re-reads of our favourite passages. However, there were so many new, romantic and exciting moments as well as heartbreak and desperation experienced through Christian’s eyes, mind and heart. Tears, laughs and romantic sighs……we went through all the emotions once more.

‘My throat constricts as my heart expands. I’m on the edge of something unknown, a plain where the horizon disappears and the territory is new and unexplored. It’s terrifying. It’s confusing. It’s exciting. What are you doing to me, Ana? Where are you leading me?’

Oh my, the heat…the heat combined with the honest and captivating yet conflicted and contradictory feeling of unworthiness, of feeling loved, the fear of loss yet gaining so much more. It all added up to an all-encompassing and more enthralling journey than we could’ve imagined.

‘Be in the moment, Grey. Live this. Feel this. Conquer this. I am at Ana’s mercy. The woman I love.’

Oh, it felt like coming home, an embrace from an old lover, a kiss from the lips of a loved one. The words familiar, yet somehow new. The story that has lived in our hearts has had new life breathed into it and we loved every single moment.

‘This is me, Ana. All of me. And I love you.’