Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal, Romance

Publishing Info: 2009 by Atom (first published 2006)

Pages: 434

Star Rating: 2/5

Back Cover Summary:

When Isabella Swan moves to the gloomy town of Forks and meets the mysterious, alluring Edward Cullen, her life takes a thrilling and terrifying turn. With his porcelain skin, golden eyes, mesmerizing voice, and supernatural gifts, Edward is both irresistible and impenetrable. Up until now, he has managed to keep his true identity hidden, but Bella is determined to uncover his dark secret. What Bella doesn’t realize is that the closer she gets to him, the more she is putting herself and those around her at risk. And it might be too late to turn back …

It’s probably clear from the 2 star rating that I didn’t particularly like this book. As I said in my previous blog post, I’m reading Twilight for the first time, as it’s on the reading list for my degree. I’ve seen and disliked the films, and I’ve heard so many mixed opinions about this book that in many ways I didn’t actually know what to expect. Would I hate it as much as I was anticipating? Or would it be not as bad as expected? I tried to go in with an open mind.

The book actually starts out reasonably well (much to my surprise). Unfortunately it set up an expectation that I might not hate the rest of the book as much as I expected to, but that hope didn’t last all too long. It starts off fairly typically – a girl moves to another town, which she dislikes greatly, and is the new girl in school. Something that’s been done plenty of times before, but although Bella didn’t want to move, it was her choice to, not her parents’ choice. That piqued my curiosity because it seemed to be a contradictory situation and I was interested to know why Bella had made that decision even though she seemed to hate Forks so much. So my initial impression of the book was a reasonably good one. Bella seemed to be an ordinary girl, and not quite as bland as in the films (I think the acting contributed there).

Even when Edward was first introduced I still didn’t mind the book. If I hadn’t seen the films and knew nothing about the story, I probably would have been intrigued to find out more about the mysterious Cullen family. At first, I could understand why Bella was interested in Edward, his peculiar behaviour towards her meant that it made sense for her to be thinking about him and wondering if and why he seemed to hate her and have a physical aversion towards her. Then they get talking and spend a lot of time staring at each other and Bella spends a lot of time thinking about Edward, and I mean yeah she’s a teenage girl with a crush, but she’s constantly thinking about it and it just started to get on my nerves. I still didn’t mind the book too much though. At this point, I didn’t even dislike it yet.

Then the book goes downhill. Dramatically. Insta-love is one of my pet peeves that annoys me most about young adult books. Bella and Edward hardly know each other, and yet a third of the way through the book Bella starts thinking about how she ‘loves’ Edward – “unconditionally and irrevocably”. Um, no dear, you’re obsessed and infatuated, not in love. The whole middle section of the book was the worst part by far for me. It just went on and on, with so much awful dialogue and going on about being ‘in love’ even though they only just met. Don’t start me on how stalkerish Edward is – watching her sleep every night? That equals breaking and entering and stalking. That’s not romantic, that’s creepy. Bella’s dependence on Edward is also so much the problem, which is why I used the word obsession earlier.

Then the book redeems itself a little in the last quarter of the book, where something actually happens. Having seen the film I knew what happened, but I can imagine it would be quite exciting if you didn’t know what was going to happen, and there were a couple of twists. This last section did definitely keep my attention.

This book could have been okay if not for its fatal flaw – the obsessive relationship between Bella and Edward, and their irritating professions of love. Which unfortunately, as a romance story, is the main part of the book. I liked the rainy and bleak setting of Forks, and there were some good descriptions of the setting. The history of the Cullen family is interesting and I like that Meyer gives the backstory of the family and how they came to be the kind of vampires they are. The minor characters were actually more likeable to me than Bella and Edward. I really liked Alice as a character and also liked the other Cullens even though they didn’t feature much until the last section. I also liked the idea of vampires who hunt animals rather than humans, but that they still find that difficult. It seemed realistic to me that they would still find restraining from human blood a challenge even after a hundred years, and this creates an interesting inner conflict for the vampire characters.

I won’t be reading the rest of the series as I know I would probably just end up being annoyed and frustrated with it. There are so many books I want to read, and would rather spend my time reading ones that I know I’m going to enjoy more. Maybe one day though I’ll wade my way through the rest of the books out of curiosity.