by J A Wright

Created on: August 30, 2009   Last Updated: August 31, 2009

I encountered the first book by Stephenie Meyer quite by accident. I was browsing in Waterstones, looking for something easily digested and fantastical. I'm an adult, a mother in fact, but I don't rule out teen fiction as a potential genre.

I read Twilight very quickly, entirely consumed by the power of the story, the depth of characters and the hypnotic flow in reading. I was impressed by her writing style, a fluid experience with vast emotive capacity which was entirely fulfilled.

The whole series is a vampire love story in essence, it sounds mushy and juvenile with such a brief description but it is accurate. Bella is a 17 year old human, Edward is 18 going on 100 and a vampire, masquerading as a high school student to create the cover his 'vegetarian' family require to blend with society.

I discovered the second novel, New Moon, was released and dashed out to buy it and devoured it in much the same manner.

Eclipse was still really enjoyable but I won't write about the details here.

Breaking Dawn has been an entirely different beast. I've looked forward to this book for months and had to begin reading it as soon as I could. I felt the beginning was garbled, the events ploughed through as fast as possible, like the author had to get certain events over and done with but couldn't make it so meaningful as in the first book.

Edward and Bella have moved on, to one of the possible natural next steps. Let's face it, readers of the series will know there were several possibilities, but only one written version; we all have our personal ideal in our heads. I felt disappointed that the story line went straight from the end of book 3 into a much awaited decision with enormous consequences for all involved, as if it was nothing more than Sunday lunch in the grand scheme of things. It was so dreadfully casual, so understated and so entirely flat.

Almost half of it feels like it's merely the polite but necessary introduction to the real story which suddenly picks up from the bare bones of some crucial events. Again I was disappointed, but it's beginning to pick up all the recognisable traits of her better tales by now. There's a crisis, a dilemma which rides on the tail of something unbelievable which was again treated like a mere blip in the plan. I can see how the arrival of 'it' has made a useful story arc and was a wonderful possibility and I can completely see the future potential for 'it', but the whole scenario was dealt with in such a blase manner. Bella

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