This may be an easy one but it’s one we can get out of the way to focus on others. I’ll admit that I read them because I was curious about all the buzz and because there were films coming for it. They’re utterly ridiculously portrayals of a world that clearly nobody involved in it has ever heard and the toxicity is beyond belief. Still, there are moments where it works and there are elements of the films that I do like as it smoothed off some of the harder edges. But while this book may be popular (or was hugely popular at one time – it was everywhere!), it wasn’t something that I loved and the more I saw the damage it did to the BDSM community the more I hated it.

Bonus question: What’s a favorite book of yours that you loaned someone and they hated? How did you react?