The best worst reviews of the new 50 Shades of Grey book

The first reviews of EL James's retelling of the Fifty Shades story through Christian's eyes are in - and the critics have given it a spanking.

Grey has been described as, alternatively, "Mr Darcy with nipple clamps", a "creepy beyond belief" and (our favourite) a "boring dork with mommy issues". Here are the best worst reviews:

Christian is an egotistical, obsessive-compulsive, creepy stalker lusting after a college-aged girl.

• Kirsten Acuna, Business Insider

Grey, the fourth book from EL James, is about as sexy as a misery memoir and as arousing as the diary of a sex offender.... Here the look is that of a desperate sexual predator. Within moments of meeting Miss Steele, Grey has decided he needs to “fetter, f--- and flog” her; he then imagines what it would be like to shove some peeled ginger root up her behind.

• Bryony Gordon, Telegraph

Instead of lighthearted and repetitive mild S&M, the “love affair” is now the twisted work of an utter psychopath. Whenever Ana leaves the room, even just for two minutes, Christian assumes she’s making out with another man... The first trilogy was a fantasy. This book is far more realistic – and creepy beyond belief.

• Jenny T Colgan, Guardian

He’s a boring dork. He’s a man with massive unresolved mommy issues who runs around listening to the Foo Fighters, using the winky-face emoji in his erotic emails and playing endless golf with a man called Bastille. He relentlessly tells Anastasia that he is a one-in-a-million super-stud because of his daring BDSM hobby, while actually daydreaming about braiding her hair

• Alexandra Heminsley, the Pool

His tendency to control and stalk read like passages from a psychological thriller. The background check is ordered seconds after he first meets Ms Steele, and when she breaks up with him he first runs and then has his driver slowly cruise past her house

• The Economist

His own disturbing backstory is briefly revealed after he has upset Ana with her first seriously violent flogging with a belt at the end of the book... He lays in bed feeling ever so sorry, remembering his mommy being beaten with a belt by a man who called her a “f--ed-up bitch”... Doesn’t this suggest that S&M is the product of abuse?

• David Sexton, Evening Standard

This book is not meant to be polite - nor subtle - but Christian was definitely sexier when more of him was left to the imagination.

• Laura Davis, Liverpool Echo

More: The most tortured prose from the new Fifty Shades book