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Good for a rainy day fantasy... Jul 28, 2008 (729 of 819 found this helpful)
It seems this book has received massive amounts of acclaim, but I never heard of it until I decided to watch The Dark Knight. A preview for the movie Twilight came on and mentioned that it was based on the best-selling novel by Stephanie Meyer. Since the preview looked good and I prefer to read books before seeing the movie, I picked up a copy.
Now that you know why I purchased the book, I should also mention that I'm not necessarily the target demographic and haven't been for a few years. But that doesn't mean I don't enjoy the good YA fantasy fiction book every now and again. (I've been called a perpetual teenager on more than one occasion.)
I'm going to try and keep this review as spoiler-free as possible. In case you haven't already gathered it from other reviews, or the book description itself, Twilight is about a young girl named Bella Swan who moves to Forks, Washington and finds herself in love with a vampire named Edward Cullen. The climax of the story happens when a vampire who doesn't abstain from feasting on humans, as the Cullen coven does, decides he wants Bella. Up until this point (first three quarters), the novel progresses at a moderate, but not lagging pace and then instantly picks up.
The book itself is a rather easy read, however, the characters seem somewhat shallow. Bella is supposed to be an honour student, but behaves exactly the opposite. Edward, who has been in existence for more than a hundred years, should be more intelligent and far wiser than is portrayed in his character. Armed with this tidbit about him, Meyer had plenty of room to play around and mold him into so much more, but never truly took that opportunity.
In fact, after finishing the first book (I've read both Twilight and New Moon), I wondered what a century old vampire might find utterly attractive in a seemingly average 17 year old girl, besides the fact that she smelled delectable, could pick out a common tune by Debussy, and had a penchant for identifying the mitotic phases of an onion. Even Bella herself wonders the same thing and makes it plainly obvious by asking almost every other page what this magnificent Adonis can possibly see in her, which became rather tiring.
(On another note, I'm still trying to figure out how any person with dark circles under his eyes and lavender eyelids can be likened to Adonis. It could just be me, but the way Meyer described their features, I couldn't help imagining a well-fed crack fiend half the time.)
While I don't understand how the love between Bella and Edward can be so true and deep as made out in the book, considering they only knew each other for a few months, I can understand how Bella formed such a strong attachment to Edward: he saved her life on more than one occasion and, in a sense, has become her personal Superman. Is this right thinking? Dunno, but I guess constantly saving a girl who can barely walk without tripping does equate to being inexplicably lovable.
By the end of the novel, I realized that Bella's character, though stubborn, was unbelievably insecure--more so than one would expect from the typical teenage girl--and Edward, arrogant as he can be, used this insecurity to his benefit (whether consciously or not), thus causing multiple crises of conscience for "putting [her] in harm's way".
When one really steps back from this novel and looks at the entire scope of it, the true dysfunction of their unhealthy relationship is obviously apparent.
Plus, Meyer's overuse of the word incredulous began grating on my senses, not to mention all the glaring, whining, cringing, grimacing, and her overwhelming need to append a "he said" or "she said" to almost every bit of dialog that transpired. (Surely, even truly young minds are able to keep up with the general flow of dialog). And let's not get started on the editing: You know the editor was asleep at the wheel, or
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Best book of the decade? Really? Apr 17, 2009 (150 of 166 found this helpful)
I seem to be the only teen/preteen girl who isn't obsessed with Twilight. Unlike the doting fangirls who seem to make up about 80% of the reviewers, I found it to be a bit like pudding~ simple and easy to swallow, but with absolutely no nutritional value.
{{WARNING! THIS PARAGRAPH CONTAINS SPOILERS!}}
We all know the story: Isabella Swan (what a dumb name!) moves to the rainy town of Forks, Washington to live with her divorced father, who can't cook anything despite having lived on his own for years. Bella enrolls in the local high school and meets the impossibly beautiful Edward Cullen, who she falls madly in love with within the first few months of knowing him. That was the first half of the book--after that, there's a lengthy period where not much happens, we just get lots of purple descriptions of Edward's magnificence, and how Bella couldn't possibly be good enough for this "Adonis-like creature", blah, blah, blah. Then near the end, this random evil vampire shows up to kill Bella, and--* Gasp *!?--Edward comes to her rescue.
All of the characters are extremely flat and undeveloped (some, notably Eric, shouldn't even exist), except for the two leads, who are at least two-dimensional rather than one-dimensional. But am I seriously supposed to care about these people? The only character I did like was Jacob, because he had the essence of an actual person.
Twilight has got to be the most blatant reader insertion/wish-fulfillment scenario I've ever read. It might as well be told in the second person. I mean, what teenage girl doesn't want a gorgeous vampire boyfriend (Meyer's thinking)? This is made even more blatant by the fact that Bella is very much a blank canvas onto which the reader can project herself; she doesn't have much of a personality besides being clumsy and fainting easily basically so Edward can come save her, and we never even get a good idea of what she looks like. She has no goals or ambitions--she simply wants to be with Edward 24/7. [" `I would rather die than stay away from you.'"]
And that brings us to Edward. In case you haven't gathered this already, he's inhumanly beautiful, as we're reminded at least once on every page. We constantly hear about his "angel's face", his "perfectly muscled chest", his "flawless lips", his "gold-colored eyes", etc., etc. His only defining personality trait is being very, very moody.
The two leads love each other for incredibly shallow reasons. Bella loves Edward because he's beautiful and mysterious and has saved her butt on numerous occasions because of her own penchant for getting into damsel-in-distress situations. Perhaps it's understandable she's infatuated with him, but "unconditionally and irrevocably in love"? Not right. After the halfway point in the book, she becomes annoyingly obsessed with him, not wanting to be away from him for more than two minutes.
Edward loves Bella because she smells good and he wants to take a big bite out of her jugular vein. Really, Stephenie Meyer, you could've done better than that.
It's clear even to me that their relationship is not a healthy one--it often borders in the obsessive, including the fact that Edward is protective of Bella to the point of stalking her--but Meyer romanticizes and idealizes it so supposedly no one will notice or care.
The writing style is just mediocre, with a distinctly amateurish, almost fanfiction-like atmosphere to it, as if the author were purposely dumbing it down for the target demographic. The main problem is that the characters rarely just "say" anything. Almost always, they have to "muse" it or "agree" it or "retort" it or "promise" it or "mutter" it, a feature that gets annoying after a while. [" `Very different', I agreed."] Meyer also has a tendency to overuse adverbs and adjectives, clearly with the intent of stretching out sentences ["I followed two unisex raincoats through the door." "Hi
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Are you guys serious? Dec 1, 2008 (207 of 236 found this helpful)
I don't get it. I just don't get it. I thought young adult fiction had hit its low point with Eragon, but apparently I was wrong. Bella Swan (literally, "beautiful swan," which should be a red flag to any discerning reader) moves to the rainy town of Forks, and the whining begins on page 1. She goes to live with her father Charlie, and is quickly established to be a mopey, ungrateful, self-pitying little toerag. Bella then attends her new school, which turns out to be an all-out caricature of high school with about zero (rounding up) grounding in real life. Her classmates' reaction can be summed up thusly: "OMG. NEW STUDENT. OMG YOU GUYS, NEW STUDENT. STARE AT HER, FOR SHE IS CLEARLY SUPERIOR TO US." Bella Sue is promptly adored by everyone in the school, except the mysterious Cullens, who spend their time brooding, being pretty, smoldering, being perfect, and sparkling. No, seriously. NO, SERIOUSLY. Bella meets Edward, the Culleniest of the Cullens, (meaning he is more perfect and emo than the rest of them,) they fall in love within thirty pages, (much of this time is spent in Bella's head going back and forth between "Does he like me?" "Does he hate me?" "Do I like him?" "Why does he hate me?" and on and on and on AND ON. That is, when she's not being a horrible snobby twit to the boys at school who show affection in genuinely sweet ways, i.e., not breaking into her house and watching her while she sleeps. While she sleeps. Not knowing that he's there. IN HER HOUSE.) The plot shows up somewhere in the last fifty pages, which involves an EVIIIIIILL vampire named James who wants to eat Bella. James is the only character I like.
I generally try to find something redeeming about books, but I honestly have nothing good to say about this drivel. Meyer writes as if the reader is an absolute idiot who has to be told every sing tiny little thing; we are never given the chance to interpret what's going on in the characters' heads. There is no mystery, no intrigue, no suspense. The characters themselves are cut-and-dried, stereotypical, and maddeningly unoriginal. Bella's (supposedly) the clever, beautiful heroine, Edward's the dark, brooding bad boy, James is... uh, the guy that wants to eat Bella. Meyer clearly wants Bella to be a strong female character, but the horrible sad truth is that she's pathetic. Bella follows Edward's every word religiously, never sticks up for herself, has no spine to speak of, plays Suzie Housewife to her father, and has no existence outside of her "romance" with Edward. On that note, let it be said that Nathaniel Hawthorne got more romance into a few lines about a rosebush than Meyer managed to cram into 400 pages. Edward and Bella's relationship consists almost entirely of staring at each other dewey-eyed and arguing about who's prettier (NO I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.)
You know what? This could have been a great book if Meyer had focussed more on the relationship between the leads, (and treated it for what it is: unhealthy, creepy, pathetic, borderline psychopathic,) and less on how perfect Edward is (interesting note: the word "perfect" or related terms like "flawless" are used to describe Edward more than a hundred times. That's just bad writing, guys.) What burns me up most about this book is that Edward and Bella are obviously meant to portray the perfect couple. Yeah, I really want my hypothetical daughter to walk out on her family for a guy she barely knows, invite said guy to sleep in her bed, have absolutely no life outside of said guy, and turn into a sniveling wreck when this guy looks at her the wrong way. And I also really want my hypothetical son to break into his girlfriend's house and watch her sleep (SERIOUSLY, GUYS?) , abandon whatever life he has so he can stalk this girl, and be so possessive of her that he throws a fit whenever she so much as looks at someone other than him. And people think these two are good role models? WHAT. JUST WHAT.
This
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Where are all the mothers out there? Apr 8, 2008 (300 of 345 found this helpful)
I was given Twilight to read by a 14-year-old daughter of a friend. She practically glowed when describing it. I borrowed her copy and finished it in about 24 hours. As I read, I became more and more disturbed by what I was seeing. While it's a page-turner and certainly draws you in, the book is poorly written and extremely superficial. But that's not the problem. Pretend for a moment that Edward is not a vampire, but merely a controlling, obsessive, dangerous, violent, stalking, unpredictable, unstable human male. Try re-reading some of the main characters' conversations with that in mind. As a mother, I'm not so worried about my daughter falling in love with a vampire. What I am worried about is her being influenced by the kind of all-too-human male I've just described. And Bella is the worst possible heroine. She puts herself at mortal risk over and over simply to satisfy her own physical desires. She is ready in an instant to sacrifice her whole life for some ridiculous idea of love that is obviously just intense sexual attraction. Is that what we want modeled for our daughters? Do we want them to think that it's okay to give in to their feelings even when they go against everything we have tried to teach them, much less their own common sense? Or do we want them to be self-controlled, self-confident, inspired, patient, hopeful, smart, accomplished, sensible, and wise? I am afraid that by romanticizing this kind of unhealthy relationship, Meyers gives her young readers permission to be victims, as long as it's all for love. Don't we see enough of the results of that every day on the news? I understand why teenagers might fall for this erotic daydream, but where are all the outraged mature women who should be setting the record straight? Why are they giving their silent (and not so silent) approval to this regrettable book?
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aromatic airhead meets vacuous vampire Aug 19, 2008 (254 of 292 found this helpful)
I wanted to like this book. For one thing, it came highly recommended by reputable reader-friends (sorry guys, nothing personal). It took me a good 200 pages to even realize that I didn't like it, but as the pages slipped by, so did this book's potential to tell a convincing, complex and emotionally-gripping story.
I didn't mind the slow start. Bella Swan's teenage over-reaction that "the world is going to end, or at least suck for a while" when she moves from Phoenix to Forks, WA was a familiar yet believable theme for a young adult book. I forgave her silly name and her paralyzing (literally) clumsiness. For a while.
Then Bella discovers the attractive, standoffish, teenage vampire clique. Don't get me wrong, I knew there would be vampires. I had hoped they would bring some intrigue, interesting character interaction, and a few creative supernatural twists to the mix. I was wrong: Edward, the main vampire/love interest must be the most blatant example of author-male fantasy insertion in a story I have ever read--the way his beauty is praised ad-nauseum, as is his ability to out-play/perform/karate/run etc. every mortal/immortal on the planet in any game/sport/musical instrument/hand-to-hand combat/race etc. certainly attests to that. Edward and his (almost) equally Hollywood Hot family are less creatures of the night, and more a blend of Greek god and barbie doll whose baseball games are confused for thunderstorms by us mortals. They are also apparently perpetual high school students, moving to schools every few years to keep anyone from catching on. Is this consistent with Meyer's view of noble "vegetarian" vampires who only want to alleviate the mortal misery of their weak human neighbors? With Dr. Carlisle the one notable exception, I can't quite suspend my disbelief that a hundred years would NOT be enough time to fake your age, get into law school, med school, the foreign service branch of the state department...(or at least use certain inherent skills to become pool boys or tennis instructors).
All this was mildly irritating, but what really brought the star-count down for me was that this book had so much potential to challenge my perception of the world, to make me think. I kept reading because I expected there to be a twist...not a "gotcha" moment, but one where the characters grow too big for the box they've been placed in, where they become bold and try to deal with their issues. I wanted to Bella to challenge the emotionally manipulative hold Edward has on her. I wanted Edward to fail at something and discover humility, and even have to rely on Bella for a change. I wanted Bella and Edward to discover that there are consequences for misinterpreting an attraction based scent/beauty for one based on communication, compromise, and time. I kept reading, sure that something complex and meaningful would happen...
I hope I don't spoil anything when I say that the characters start off in the shallow end, and end up in the pool parking lot. When the action finally started at around pg 400, all I could think of was what one of the robots on Mystery Science Theater 3000 sarcastically remarked during a B-movie that was being thoroughly panned: "And the reason this part works so well is that we care about the characters!" If a random "bad guy" is suddenly going to appear at the end of a book and try to kill one of the main characters for no apparent reason, I want to at least care about them!
Finally, a brief note on the writing itself. I thought some of the mood-setting description was pretty well done, and honestly didn't notice anything truly jarring until after the appearance of Edward. Suddenly, cliches like "a carved statue", "an Adonis", "his angel face" surface at least every page or so, as do numerous purple descriptions of eye color meant to substitute for character depth. Over-dramatic facial expressions abound, especially in