Sink Your Teeth Into This

Hello and welcome to my blog about young adult books! I'll be picking two new books a week to summarize and review.

This week's book is Twilight by Stephenie Meyer.

Synopsis:

Twilight starts off with the seventeen year old protagonist, Isabella Swan, moving from Phoenix, Arizona to rainy Forks, Washington. While at her new school, she attracts the attention of many of her fellow classmates, except that of the mysterious Edward Cullen, who acts repulsed by her. Bella is able to trick her friend Jacob Black into telling her an ancient legend about vampires. After a little research of her own, Bella comes to the conclusion that Edward and his family are 'vegetarian' vampires, or ones that only diet on animal blood. Edward and Bella fall in love, but their relationship is thrown into peril when another vampire coven comes into town. One of the new vampires, James, decides to make Bella his target and the Cullens are forced to hide Bella in Phoenix. James hunts her down, and she is tricked into meeting him in an abandoned ballet studio where she is attacked. However, Edward swoops in to save the day before Bella can be killed. The book ends with Edward and Bella attending prom; Bella is asking Edward to turn her into a vampire, but Edward refuses, not wanting her to ruin her life for him.

My thoughts:

Before the whole Twilight craze began, I actually enjoyed the book. But then I read it again, and again, and I realized that it's nothing more than a guilty pleasure book. To start off, there's really no plot at all; it's a typical 'girl meets boy' story with the rather overdone twist of vampire lore thrown into the mix. Then, the relationship as a whole is completely unrealistic. Based on Edward's inhumanly good looks and the scent of Bella's blood, they're suddenly soulmates after only a few weeks. Bella is even willing to trade her humanity to become a vampire for him.

I found it extremely annoying reading from Bella's point of view, as she only really commented on how perfect Edward was, and always questioned how he could be in love with her. That reason was never disclosed either; Meyer hinted that the main attraction was Bella's blood, and the reader is led to believe that at some point in time Edward fell in love with her whole self. That irks me quite a bit, considering that Bella describes herself as being shy and clumsy, and has almost no personality (read this: http://psa.blastmagazine.com/2008/08/16/twilight-sucks-and-not-in-a-good-way/, it dead on describes Bella. Beware of spoilers at the end though!). It seems as if all the personality traits were piled onto Edward. He went from describing himself as a 'monster', to then being described as 'Adonis-like', and then to being portrayed as a moral 'man' that just so happens to sneak into Bella's room at night. I was more than confused at that combination.

As I stated before, I originally loved the book. I fell for Edward's charm and Bella's endearing clumsiness. If I hadn't gone back and reread the book several times, I probably would have skipped over the plot holes and not noticed the character's unlikely traits. Overall, it's not the best of books, but it's not the worst I've read either (this blog shares the same perspective as I do: http://duncanheights.com/blog/?p=1582). If you want to lose yourself in another mainstream tale about vampire love, then go right ahead. But if you don't feel like wasting your time with yet another book targeted at 13 year old girls, then Twilight is definitely not the book for you.