EL James's Fifty Shades of Grey and its three spinoffs are worldwide, record-breaking bestsellers that have a huge and devoted following, so who are we to judge them?

...We're kidding, of course.

The series is creepy, melodramatic, terrible for women (and not great for humanity as a whole), crassly materialistic and – as we will shortly see – an ongoing crime against the written word.

As our inner goddesses hotly anticipate the Fifty Shades Freedmovie in February, here are the best/worst lines from the novel Darker.

1. "Desire pools dark and deadly in my groin."

Ana should probably get her doctor to look at that.

2. "His mouth – oh, his mouth is distracting, and unbidden."

We're not sure 'unbidden' means what you think it does, EL.

3. "Her eyes are brown, like bourbon, but flat."

Don't you just hate it when your bourbon goes flat?

4. "Desire explodes like the Fourth of July throughout my body."

Loud, flaming and frightening to pets.

5. "I have become my own island state. A ravaged, war-torn land where nothing grows and the horizons are bleak."

U OK, hun?

6. "... It's there in the air between us, that electricity. It's palpable. I can almost taste it, pulsing between us, drawing us together."

Palpable, magnetic electricity that you can taste. What does it taste like?

Related: 23 funniest quotes from EL James's Fifty Shades of Grey

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7. "'You. Are. Mine,' he snarls, emphasising each word."

Thanks for explaining that basic punctuation.

8. "'You said you loved me,' he whispers. 'Is that now in the past tense?'"

Spoken like a true robot.

9. "We don't have long, Anastasia, and the way I'm feeling right this moment, we won't need long."

How romantic.

10. "Sometimes you're so closed off... like an island state."

Enough with the island states, already.

11. "A small moan escapes my mouth as my insides melt and unfurl."

An unmistakable symptom of Legionnaires' disease.

12. "I have a Christian Grey mix tape in the guise of a high-end iPad."

A low-end iPad, if it existed, would probably have been sufficient for a playlist.

13. "I gasp, and his mouth swoops down."

Like a hungry eagle?

14. "What a time to have a brain-to-mouth filter malfunction."

Beep beep.

15. "I could watch you sleep forever, Ana."

Spoken like a true murderer.

Related: 32 creepy Grey extracts that prove Christian Grey is the worst

16. "... My heart swells with a nervous , heady elation."

And a hearty joy in her head, presumably.

17. "... Like the sorcerer's apprentice I am, I let go, and we find our release together."

As we recall, the sorcerer's apprentice was a cartoon mouse who magicked up a bunch of unruly mops to get out of doing his chores.

18. "I flush, and the undesirable thought that Leila could probably keep up slithers invidious and unwelcome into my mind."

'Likely to provoke jealousy'? Maybe you meant 'insidious'.

19. "That is not the reaction I expected. I was anticipating full-scale Armageddon."

At what point did you first suspect your boyfriend was a controlling drama queen?

20. "And I feel it – the electricity between us – tangible, drawing us together."

The palpable, magnetic electricity strikes again.

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21. "Franco is small, dark, and gay. I love him. 'Such beautiful hair!' he gushes with an outrageous, probably fake Italian accent."

Curse those gays and their fake accents.

22. "I wonder if it's still lust at first sight for them."

That's a basic misunderstanding of the concept of 'first sight'.

23. "Isn't that a symptom of schizophrenia? I must Google that."

"Dear Google, does my boyfriend have schizophrenia?"

24. "Seeing Christian undone is enough to seal my fate, and I come audibly, exhaustingly, spinning down and around, collapsing on top of him."

"Undone"? "Fate"? "Spinning down"? There is a lot to unpack here, and, frankly, we don't have the patience.

25. "How do they know it's him? His trademark unruly copper hair, no doubt."

Ana lives in a world where a small party mask is enough to completely conceal someone's identity. Thank God for trademark hair.

26. "My anxiety level has shot up several magnitudes on the Richter scale."

You measure your anxiety in terms of earthquakes?

27. "...On his own in Paris, the Arc de Triomphe serving as a giveaway to his location."

Sacre bleu.

28. "I don't know what the social conventions are for meeting known molesters of children."

She should probably Google that.

29. "He won't tell you because he probably doesn't realise it himself, notwithstanding what I've said to him, but that's Christian."

Heretofore realised by himself, they that very moment thereupon discussed it.

30. "I bury my hands in his hair, holding him to my mouth, consuming him, my tongue as avaricious as his."

Um, 'avaricious' means acquisitive or materialistic, not greedy.

31. "You're going to unman me, Ana."

That sounds worryingly permanent.

32. "He is an exceptional lover, I'm sure – though, of course, I have no comparison."

High praise indeed.

33. "'I do hope you're not overly fond of these panties.' He tears through them with his adept fingers, and they disintegrate in his hands."

We do hope she wasn't overly fond of those cheap disintegrating panties.

34. "Pulling my head back, he kisses me, his tongue urgent, relentless, needy."

Like a pneumatic drill with attachment issues.

35. "He laughs and then is distracted by his BlackBerry, which must be on vibrate because it doesn't ring."

Thanks for the detail. It adds so much to the narrative.

36. "He has a hotline to my groin."

...and it's been ringing off the hook all day long.

37. "It feels like an eon has passed while I process all this, though in reality it is only a split second."

We know the feeling.

38. "What's eating him? Oh, myself probably..."

"Myself"? Someone's been watching too much Apprentice.

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39. "She's like a fallen ethereal wraith."

Sure she is.

40. "I was serious about marrying you. We can get to know each other then."

Sounds like a mature and sensible way to go about things.

41."I choose a song haphazardly and press 'repeat' so it will play over and over again."

Shout out for all those readers who don't know what 'repeat' means.

42. "I don't think my heart could stand the strain of another e-mail like that, or my pants for that matter."

So you're saying your heart couldn't stand either the strain of the email or your pants?

43. "They dance and weave bright blazing orange with tips of cobalt blue in the fireplace in Christian's apartment."

Christian is so rich that he can afford flames whose colours are the wrong way round.

44. "All my worst fears packaged neatly into one sentence now exorcised."

Wait, what's been exorcised here?

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45. "Christian insisted on drying my hair – he's quite skilled at it."

Is there NOTHING that man can't do?

46. "... Desire and anticipation spawning in my belly."

"Spawning"?

47. "He places the tie around my neck, and slowly but dexterously ties it in what I assume is a fine Windsor knot."

Guess again, Ana. It's a noose.

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48. "Can one lust after one's husband like this? I don't remember reading about that anywhere."

Lust is fine until the bitterness and regret set in.

49. "In her pale pink, frothy baby-doll dress and killer heels, she towers over me like a Christmas tree fairy."

A fairy in killer heels.

50. "How long will this hideous overwhelming feeling last?"

533 pages exactly.

Fifty Shades Darker stars Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Kim Basinger and Rita Ora, and is directed by James Foley.

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