Book Review: Twilight

Book: Twilight (Twilight book #1) by Stephenie Meyer

Edition: Paperback

Description:

About three things I was absolutely positive.

First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was a part of him -- and I didn't know how potent that part might be -- that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.



Rating: 4 1/2 stars

Review:

I went into reading Twilight with absolutely no expectations. This was not a bad read but I had a difficulty rating this because there were things I liked about this story such as it was very interesting. However, there were also things I didn't like about it such as Isabella "Bella" Swan was an idiot for nearly 80-85% of the story. Oh and the insta-love between Bella and Edward Cullen could be very unbearable. I also was not a fan of Edward being so overbearing and possessive towards Bella.

Twilight is told from Bella's point of view and follows as she moved from Phoenix, AZ to live with her father in Forks, WA. Being the new girl at school was awkward at first but she unexpectedly found a small if not annoying (at times to her) group of friends. However, it was Edward Cullen who not only fascinated her but caused her untold of amounts of stress and anxiety due to his erratic behavior towards her.

For some reason, she figured Edward didn't like her and she did her best to ignore or avoid him which was very difficult for her to do. It wasn't until he saved her from an out of control van in the school parking lot that a few questions were starting to form. There was no way Edward should have been able to save her especially not from where he had been standing. There was also no way he could have been strong enough to offset the impact of the van without being seriously injured. The more she thought about it the more questions she had. An old legend she heard from family friend Jacob Black seemed to point her in the right direction in regards to all the questions that were running through her mind. 

But it wasn't until Edward finally let her in on his secret that he was a vampire (and so were his family) that she was able to come to an understanding. However, that knowledge didn't scare her, in fact it seemed to intrigue Bella even more.

A bond was quickly growing between them and everything was going surprisingly well for Bella. She was getting to know Edward better, met his family and had even gotten a chance to see some of their spectacular abilities. But things quickly changed at a progressively frightening pace when James, another vampire set his sights on her as the perfect kill. It's going to take a lot of maneuvering on everyone's part to keep Bella safe but James is very cunning and used to going to great lengths to achieve his goal.

Despite Bella and Edward being a little dull and boring, this turned out to be an interesting story. Even more so once the story started to focus on the other members of Edward's family. I really like Alice, Jasper, Emmett, Carlisle and Esme. There wasn't enough shown for me to get a good read on Rosalie besides the fact that she's very angry and seemed to despise Bella. If I'm not mistaken, I think Rosalie had only two lines out of the entire book. I hope that in the proceeding sequels she's given more lines than that.

I found the writing to be engaging in spite of Bella's mundane voice. Story wise this was interesting but there were some parts where the pace slowed with nothing much happening in those moments in the book. I think adding the suspense of James going after Bella shifted the story from dare I say a slightly somewhat standard supernatural romance to something more attention grabbing.

Prior to reading this, I wasn't unfamiliar with Twilight. I had bought the DVD (it's the 3 disc special edition from Target, I had no idea what this movie was about but I made sure I got all the extras) back when it first came out in 2009. The funny thing is I still have the receipt inside the case (I don't know why), it shows that I bought it on March 21, 2009. Anyway, I had watched the movie yet I wasn't too thrilled with it. But now I'm actually looking forward to not only reading the second book but watching the movie again.