Twilight - The Review

I made it through Twilight in about three days. All accounts that it was a quick read are correct. I polished it off in three chunks over the course of three evenings and my house is still in one piece – although Chickie ran out of PJs last night and had to sleep in a onesie (bad Mommy).

I have to admit that I really wasn’t all that impressed. It’s a cute idea – but it’s one that has been done before. Lots. Kids from different sides of the track fall in love and are destined to be together (insert trials and tribulations of being together *here*.) There’s a lot of fluffiness and teen angst to go with a tiny bit of drama and suspense. I kept waiting for these two lovebirds to jump each other’s bones but all that remained was a sexual tension between the two. (I know – it’s supposed to be a teen read – no bone jumping allowed.)

I mean, check out this quote from the book…BLECK. You can talk about heroin but no between the sheets action? HAH!

It could be that my typical “pool-side” read (thanks Christina) involves murder and forensic science and not love and all its emotions. Aside from being a mom now, I’m really not that sappy of a person. I don’t believe in love at first sight or soul mates. I believe that two people find each other and make a conscious decision to be together and then have to work at it. This book has all the glory and none of the substance. I think I might be too much of a realist to have fallen into the Twilight world.

Maybe I’m just too hardened from bad break-ups and too deep into adult married life to remember those early “butterflies in the stomach” days of my teens. I can definitely see how the romantics of the world get sucked in. (Mel – this means you sister.) It’s easy to fall into the knight-in-white-shining-armor story. It’s the dream of so many little girls – but not this girl.

So, all in all I don’t regret reading the book. I enjoyed some of the vampire story. I’ve read a few other vampire novels and have enjoyed them (Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian) but would have liked more of it in the novel. It seemed like the author started the story but didn’t delve into it enough to keep me interested. I needed much more meat in this novel to give it my thumbs up.

If I can find copies of the sequels to Twilight around without having to go buy them they might make my summer reading pile. I’ll let you know if I get through them.

Until then – I’ll stick to my “dead books” (as my husband likes to call them.)

~Becky