Twilight (Twilight, Book 1)

by Stephenie Meyer

Series: Twilight Saga (1)

Members	Reviews	Popularity	Average rating	Conversations
25,389	1338	14	(4.14)	5

Work details

Book details

Title	Twilight (Twilight, Book 1)
Author	Stephenie Meyer
Rating
Tags	1-a, 1-b, 2-own-parents, 3-read, 4-gift, A-2007-01, fiction, high school, lt-inspired, phoenix, R-2007-04, read 2007, series, twilight, vampires, washington, young adult
Collections	Your library, Books I have read, Books I can lend you
Your review	While this book moved along quickly despite its size, and pulled me along for the ride, I had several issues with it. First, it seems somewhat disingenuous that Bella takes so long to figure out that Edward's a vampire. It's not unrealistic, but the reader knows what the deal is after they read the back cover, so 200 pages of Edward acting suspiciously and Bella going "Huh, that's weird. Oh well." before she finally catches on gets a little tedious. Secondly, I didn't connect to Bella as a narrator hardly at all. She doesn't seem like a whole lot more than a foil through which the readers are supposed to fall in love with Edward, she rarely has much initiative or backbone of her own (making the one scene in which she comes up with the day-saving plan ring false), and her personality quirks (i.e. extreme clumsiness) shade into the realm of caricature. I can't help but compare this book to the Mediator series by Meg Cabot (parental reshuffling forces a highschool-aged girl to move across the country, where she encounters the incredibly hot and otherwise perfect supernatural boy), and whatever their other merits, at least Suze could functionally stand up for herself and show a little spine, not just wait for Dream Boy to constantly come rescue her so she could swoon about how great he was. Finally, this book didn't sit particularly well with me because at least the first 3/4 of it seem like an extended metaphor about the perils of teenage sex. Actual sex never happens, and is only mentioned once (and even then, obliquely), but the constant discussion between Edward and Bella, all "I want to be around you but I don't trust myself to be able to control my animal instincts" is a pretty thinly-veiled message. By about halfway through, I was mentally screaming "Just DO IT already, god!" at the characters, but to no avail; they spend the rest of the book talking about how dangerous and wrong it would be, but she really loves him, and he really loves her, but he can't take her innocence away, blah blah blah. It just seems to me like this bizarre come-here-oh-no-go-away-it's-wrong-and-bad-but-so-tempting attitude towards (metaphorical) sex combined with Bella's almost immediate compliance with whatever Edward wants, just because he's gorgeous... well, it seems to be a strange message to be sending to the hordes of teenaged girls who are this book's target audience. I didn't dislike this book, exactly, but all of these issues made it impossible for me to divorce myself from the thinking part of my brain and just enjoy the story; it's a cool (if not particularly original) idea for a book and I'm disappointed - I wanted to like it more than I actually did.
Other authors*
Publication	Little, Brown Young Readers (2006), Paperback, 544 pages
Publication date	2006
ISBN	0316015849 / 9780316015844
LC classification
Dewey
Primary language eng	English
Secondary language	(blank)
Original language
Date acquired	2007-01-11
Date started	2007-04-22
Date finished	2007-04-23
Summary 0	Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (2006)
Comments	From Ben Xmas 2006 Loaned to adrienne 6/4/08
BCID	XXX-
Number of copies	1
Citation	MLA, APA, Chicago/Turabian, Wikipedia citation
Data source	Amazon.com

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