Book Reviews: The Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer

The following review is written from the view point of thirty-two year old mother of four and wife to one.  These books are written for teens, but have a fan base among adult women.  Word of caution, the books are great, but I would not recommend watching the movie New Moon on opening night.  I watched Twilight within a week of it coming out and there were A LOT of teenage screaming girls and as a thirty-two year old mother of four and wife to one, it was a bit hard to take. However, the books were very enjoyable and perfect summer reads.

Twilight:

In Twilight, Bella, a very ordinary girl who lives with her father, falls in love with Edward, a vampire who likes to feast on animals instead of people.  Bella used to live with her mother.  Her mother falls in love with a baseball player, so they need to travel.  To help alleviate her mother’s worries, Bella moves in with her father.  At Bella’s new school, there are a pack of super good-looking kids who are really pale.  One of them, Edward, catches Bella’s attention and viceversa.

I think what has attracted so many readers, especially adult women, to Twilight is that the books reminds you of your first love.  The book thrives on the romantic tension of two people who are attracted to each other, yet are unsure of what to do about it.  I read the book before the movie came out, so now when I think of Bella and Edward, all I can think of Kristin Stewart and Robert Pattinson.  But before all of that, the novel successfully brings out every teenage girl emotion imagined and then some.

Meyer successfully manages to take an all ready heightened situation (teenage hormones and drama) and adds to the excitement with the forbidden: vampires.  Edward is essentially the “bad boy” that every girl dreams of.  You know that you shouldn’t like him because he is only going to break your heart, but you can’t really help yourself because he is just that good looking.  However is Bella’s case, Edward might eat her…but that just makes the book that much more interesting.

What also sticks out in Twilight is the sexual tension between Bella and Edward.  While there is not a lot of sex in the novel (okay there isn’t any at all), there is always a sense of wanting it without having it, because if they get too close then Edward might eat her.  And who wants to be eaten?  Well, maybe Bella does.

New Moon:

New Moon is my favorite of all four of the novels.  In New Moon, Edward realizes that he is just too dangerous to be around Bella, because at any moment he could eat her or one of his family members might eat her.  Edward loves her too much to see her eaten, so he decides to break up with her.  Bella is devastated.  She can barely breathe, eat or sleep.  She is miserable.  Then along comes Jacob, her werewolf friend, only she doesn’t know he’s a werewolf.  Jacob comforts Bella in her misery and then falls in love with her.  But then Edward reappears in the novel…kind of.

Ah….the breakup.  Breakups always really, really suck (sometimes literally), but this book speaks to every woman because Edwards breaks up with Bella because not only is it the right thing to do, but because he loves her too much to see her hurt.  Isn’t that what every woman dreams of?  The “you are too good for me” scenario…except it was true?  It’s never true in real life, but it is great to read about in novels.

The character of Jacob is always a bit sad and is always secondary to Edward.  There are moments when you think that Bella could be happy with him…but who really wants the great big hairy guy who is always there for you?  Or do you want the really, really pale guy who is dangerous and is constantly fighting an urge to suck your blood?  So Bella must  choose between the two natural born enemies and decide who is the right one for her.

Eclipse:

This is Eclipse in a nutshell: some murder, fighting between werewolf and vampire, then “promise me you’ll never leave me again.  Promise me you’ll never leave me again.  Promise, promise…” and some reassurances, some treaties, then graduation.

The heart of the novel is a rivalry between Jacob and Edward, both of whom love Bella and want only the best for her.  So they fight and Bella must chose between her friendship for Jacob and her love for Edward.  So I thought all of this was kind of dumb because the choice was so obvious!  And there was never really a choice, Bella loved Edward.  Period.  I thought that there was a lot of unnecessary tension between the three characters that could have been removed quite easily with the removal of a character or two… I think that there might be some bias on my part.

Obviously, Eclipse was not one of my favorite of the four books.  It safely ranks in the number three spot.  I did not like how desperate Bella became around Edward. It just got annoying after awhile.  Then there was the controversy over turning Bella into a vampire. Edward made a promise to their vampire enemies that Bella would be turned into a vampire so that the bad vampires, aka the “Volturi”,  wouldn’t eat her.  So the book went on and on about how this was going to happen, without really resolving the conflict. Annoying, but I could stop reading the book.

Breaking Dawn:

Breaking Dawn is the fourth book in the Twilight Saga by Stephanie Meyer. We are reunited with the main characters, Edward and Bella, after they have defeated the young vampires and have made the promise to the Volturi to change Bella into a vampire in order to keep the secret that vampires exist and no human is to ever know about their existence.

Breaking Dawn launches full force into where Meyer’s left off in her previous novel. She doesn’t hold anything back and does not wait until the very end of the book to resolve the greatest conflict in the Twilight Saga: Will Bella go vampire? Instead she resolves the question quickly and then goes into a strange area by giving us a new problem between the lovers: a baby.

Overall, Meyer is willing to go onto the untraveled road and plays around with new vampire lore, then makes up the rules as she goes. Meyer, answers all of our questions quickly and doesn’t drag out the suspense till the very end of novel. However, the characters are not what propel the novel forward; it’s the forced plot. The novel launches too quickly into the grown-up world that Edward and Bella have been pushed into; to the point where they do not resemble the teenagers in the preceding novel, Eclipse.

Breaking Dawn is definitely a must read if you’ve read all three other books and will definitely bring about discussion, but overall feels forced and contrived.

Books Source: Borrowed from my mother. Thanks, Mom!