Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
My Rating: 1/5 stars
The story of Bella Swan who moves from Phoenix to Forks to live with her father and discovers that some of the students at Forks High school are vampires. She then falls in love with Edward who is one of the vampires.
For the first 100 pages this story seemed kind of interesting and at some points even enjoyable. But after Bella confesses to herself that she loves Edward things quickly go down hill and that's when I realized that things wouldn't get better. The next 100 pages were a dull drag that towards the end was changed from furry as I really began to hate this story. Now a 1 star rating is not something that I give lightly. I feel that, like 5, it has to be an achievement. It cannot just be plain, sloppy laziness, the writer has to go out their way to annoy me and make me hate their work. And this book managed to achieve that.
Let's start from the beginning. This story, like many romances, follows the usual steps. Step 1: introduce our protagonist, here one must show why the reader should care about this character. Now you would think that seeing as how this story is told in the first person narrative then we would get to know Bella pretty well. But now that I have finished reading Twilight the only thing that immediately comes to mind about Bella is that she doesn't like Forks and cold, wet weather. Then when I think more I remember other things, but they are all things she doesn't like. We are never really told anything about her so we never really know her. There's nothing about her that would make her stand out as a character. Well except her clumsiness, but that's a whole other can of worms because of the way it is treated in this story. Basically Bella is so clumsy and incompetent that she can't be trusted to walk by herself and this is funny and endearing. This leads to my biggest issue with the story that Bella is treated as a child by Edward (and the Cullens) who can't be trusted to make her own choices.
Step 2: introduce the love interest. This is an even bigger failure. Through out the entire book the only good things that are said about Edward is that he looks good. He and the rest of the Cullens as models, angels and gods to the point of ridiculousness which just makes their characters more bland and makes you scream "Yes, I get it, they look good!". While the other Cullens have some good traits that endear you to them Edward just comes off as a jerk. Reading the book I waited for him to do or say something that would show why he deserves Bella's, and our, love but that never happened. Then Bella just says "I am in love with Edward" and I just sat there and wondered - what, that's it? The wooing is over? What did he do to win her love other than look good? It would be one thing if the story was actually aware of that fact but it just seems completely oblivious.
Step 3: the romance. Also known as the dullest part in this book where nothing interesting happens and where my opinion of this book completely died. My biggest issue is that their entire interaction comes down to this:
Edward: "I know better so do as I say."
Bella: "Okay"
Through out the story Edward is paternalistic, moody and jealous. But the worst problem is that he comes across as a complete sociopath (though I guess a vampire would have to be). His concern for Bella seems entirely selfish. Many a times it is stated that he would be devastated if Bella got hurt and that's seems like his entire reason to care - because HE himself would be in pain. This becomes all the more clearer during the last part after it becomes clear that James wants to hunt Bella and Edward makes her promise that she won't get hurt and it's all said in such a way that it's clear he's more concerned about his own feelings than Bella's. And that's what he does through out the book - he completely ignores Bella's opinion in favour of his own.
So that is my opinion on Twilight. I could of course rant more about the fact how every male (except the taken ones) in this story desires Bella because of some "specialness" that she has and that is never explained but I think I've said enough. To sum up Twilight - it's a complete failure at romance.
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