AUTHOR: Stephenie Meyer
YEAR RELEASED: 2005
RATING: Two out of Four.
PLOT: When Bella Swan moves from sunny Phoenix to Forks, Washington, a damp and dreary town known for the most rainfall in the United States, to live with her dad, she isnt expecting to like it. But the level of hostility displayed by her standoffish high school biology lab partner, Edward Cullen, surprises her. After several strange interactions, his preternatural beauty, strength, and speed have her intrigued. Edward is just as fascinated with Bella, and their attraction to one another grows. As Bella discovers more about Edwards nature and his family, she is thrown headlong into a dangerous adventure that has her making a desperate sacrifice to save her one true love.
REVIEW: For my first book review, I decided I would review a book that is as of now a pretty hot topic: Twilight. I am aware that I am late to jump on the band wagon about reading this book, but I figure with the release of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, I could not find a better time to write this review. I am going to start with the positives. The only thing I like about this book if the take on the vampire's mythology. Now, I am aware that there is some heavy controversy over the fact that the vampire's sparkle, but I ask you to look at it like this: is there any rules or laws that are set in stone about how a vampire should be? If you look threw history, there are numerous variations over the legends from the original (Dark, fiendish creatures), Dracula (romantic, evil), and the Anne Rice types (emotional, anti-hero), and that is just naming a few. But there never is, was, or ever will be a correct stance on how a vampire should be. Most of the rating is based on the fact that Stephanie Meyer had the courage to create her own mythology. So, if it involves sparkling vampires. So be it. If they have abnormal powers (controlling emotions, seeing the future, reading minds), then so be it. End of story.
The next thing I will give credit for is the overall plot. Now, I have read that there is no plot to this story. Let me shine some light on this. The plot is made up of a bunch of mini plots (Edward trying to have Bella hate him; Edward trying to control himself around Bella; Bella trying to escape James and Victoria) that are loosely tied together. THAT is the plot. And if you ask me, it should have been told threw Edward's perspective from the start.
Sadly, that is the only part that I found good. Now we go onto to the negatives. The first is Bella's judgment. This has to do mostly to the fact that she fell for James's trap at the end. May I ask how she could have fallen for that? How could she not figure that it was an audio recording of her mom from a home movie? And on top of all that, there were numerous times that I just wanted to slap Bella silly for her being brain dead and annoying. She was being annoying and brain dead when she thought that guys at her school were all drooling and had crushes on her when they were asking her out. Could she not have figured that they were just trying to be friendly and trying to make her feel comfortable sense she was new?
The next downfall is this: too much detail. I am aware that this is suppose to be based solely threw Bella's point of view, but we do not need to be reminded of Edward's appearance, the complete scenery, and above all, her constant complaining about Edward at the beginning.
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 either non-existent, when there's a glaring grammatical error within the first ten pages.
Bottom line: I would only recommend this book if you are like me and open to new mythologies on vampires and you can mostly tolerate the stupidity of Bella. Otherwise, I do not recommend this book.
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