Five Reasons The Truth About Suzie is Better Than 50 Shades of Grey

My first novel, The Truth About Suzie, launches on Amazon today. Actually, it launched early, spawning panic and mayhem in my marketing team (me). But since it launched early, you can now read the reviews people have already posted. One of them is from my mom, so you can obviously discount that one.

I’ve written descriptions on my Amazon page, and you don’t want to re-read them here. So I’d like to take this opportunity to slam my least favorite book of the millennium and compare my book favorably to it.

Now, claiming your book is better than Fifty Shades of Grey is like saying your three-year-old is a better sushi chef than your one-year-old. You’d never eat a salmon roll made by either of them because it would be made of Legos.

But here are five reasons anyway:

5) Unlike the dolts at Random House who published 50 Shades, I hired a professional editor to eliminate the typos and grammatical errors. If you can say nothing else about my book, you can say this: the grammar is beyond reproach. And if you read this blog regularly, you know my editor earned her keep.

4) The names in my book are not stolen from 80’s nighttime soap operas. Every time I read the name “Katherine Kavanaugh” in 50 Shades, I burst out laughing. No, the names in The Truth About Suzie are stolen from regular people: your own children, your stuffed animals, yourselves. That’s right. You. And Pink Doggy.

3) I still contend that 50 Shades was written by an eighth grade boy. Honestly, I think the manuscript was found by a middle school English teacher sitting in a desk, and the culprit’s mom is covering for the real author so he doesn’t get suspended from school. I posted an example of my middle school writing once. (Here’s the link to the post: Like Sands Through The Hourglass, So Are the Days of Our Lives.) Middle school writing should remain where it belongs: in the Trapper Keeper.

2) May I boldly contend that my dialogue is far superior? You can play a drinking game while reading 50 Shades. Every time Anastasia (see #4: 80’s soap opera names) says “Holy crap!” you have to take a shot. “Holy crap!” is all that girl says. I picture her with her mouth hanging open, drool spilling from her lower lip. If you did a search/delete of that one piece of dialogue in 50 Shades, the book would be renamed 50 Pages of Kinky Sex.

1) All right, let’s talk about the kinky sex. You might think 50 Shades has me beat there, right? Let’s consult the text of 50 Shades again. “‘Aargh,’ I moaned.” Aside from the whips and chains, there is a whole lot of Aaaaargh screaming in the sex scenes. What is this, pirate porn? I suppose my complaint belongs in #2, Dialogue, but there it stands. Even as mommy porn, 50 Shades fails. Yes, there’s far less kinky sex in my book and absolutely no pirate sex. But you have the whole rest of the internet available to you if that’s your bag.

The Truth About Suzie is available on Amazon today. 50 Shades is being made into a movie that will either be awful or will transcend awfulness into so-bad-it’s-unintentionally-hilarious territory.