A Spoopy Love Affair With Books

This book and I are having issues. I've read three other books since I've started Grey, including one that was longer by about a hundred pages. I'm just not getting into it. There are two important reasons for this:

• I didn't like the first book that much. It has no story. Christian behaves like a douche-rocket. I would likely not have continued with the series if I hadn't read the summary for the other two books and seen that they, unlike the first, actually had stories. Not good stories, necessarily, but sensational ones, at the very least. Reliving the "story" of the first book that I barely, barely gave three stars to... ehhhh. Made worse by the fact that so much of this book is just rehash, rehash, rehash, when it could have added so much about what he did when he wasn't with Ana, who he talked to, what he felt... Though I suppose it'd take a better author than James to pull that off.
• Christian is a douche-rocket. I've mentioned this. The book somehow makes me dislike him more than I did when I read the first book, seeing it from his point of view, because I was actually imagining him being a little less of an ass. But here it is, writ large. I long for the character development of the second and third book. It did manage to make me see the one scene that made me profoundly uncomfortable, when he spanks Ana, from his point of view, that he's actually listening for her to safe word him, or say no, or even cry, and she does none of the above. I share his frustration that she's not communicating with him. Still acting like a butthole, though.