by Kat Musselwhite

Created on: July 08, 2009   Last Updated: July 09, 2009

Twilight

Author: Stephenie Meyer

Release: 2005

Publisher: Atom

Pages: 464

Rating: 7/10

Read This If You Liked: Anything with Vampires!

Twilight is the story of Bella, a young city girl who makes the tough decision to move from the heat of Phoenix to the miserable town of Forks. But, what Bella doesn't know, is that moving to Forks is going to change her life forever

Being seasoned in reading overtly over-hyped books, I actually didn't have very high expectations of this book. I thought that it was going to be nothing more than over-rated teenage rubbish that was poorly written and riddled with cliche. But, I must admit, I was wrong.

This book quickly had me hooked; Meyer created such intensity between the two main protagonists that it is incredibly difficult not to feel like a teenager again; those intense feeling in the pit of your tummy when you spotted the boy that you liked across the room any girl, who has ever been a teenager, can relate to that feeling and the way it simply washes over you. The way your heart skipped a beat and you felt like you couldn't breathe when he was near you (although this is far more literal in Bella's case!). Yes, it is all a little cliched, but somehow, Meyer makes it work brilliantly, and you find yourself feeling so excited (albeit a little scared) for Bella.

Admittedly at times the writing isn't of the highest calibre, as you would expect from a book so highly regarded, and some conversations between Bella and Edward didn't go on for a couple of pages, but entire chapters, with little else really going on. I also felt like there was just too much explanatory conversation. Is this a case of telling more than showing, I wonder? Another problem I had with these conversations was that, at times, the dialogue just did not feel fluent, meaning that it didn't sound like real speech, but more like pandering to political correctness, using language as it should be used, but never is in general conversations amongst people.

As for the character, I must admit that, at times, I found Bella excruciatingly annoying and snobby. She was a perfect example of the type of flimsy girl that I'm sure feminists would have immense issues with; she was far too much of a damsel-in-distress and seemingly completely incapable of really doing anything for herself without getting into trouble. In fact, as I'm writing this, I find myself strongly comparing her with Jack Bauer's daughter Kim (24) of whom, also seemed to literally walk

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