Twilight - Stephenie Meyer

2006, 544 pages
It is very embarrassing for me to write the next sentence: I loved the book. Why embarrassing? Because it is a young adult book. The heroin is a 17 years old high school student, and it talks about first love. My interests should be a little more… mature, shouldn’t they? And if all that isn’t bad enough, I didn’t just love the book. I fell in love with it. I was completely submerged it in. I couldn’t let it out of my hand. I read all of its 500+ pages in two days. I can’t remember too many times such think has happened to me.
So what’s going on in this book – Bella comes back to Forks, WA to live with her father. Her mom left the town with her when she was a baby, but now she decides to go back there, for reasons that become clear later in the book, though she despises this green and rainy place, and much prefers hot and arid Phoenix where she lives with her mother since the divorce. In the new small-town school a group of extremely good looking boys and girls catches her attention. They sit together in the cafeteria and don’t socialize with the other kids. She gives special attention to Edward, who is good looking, and as she finds out soon enough, also smart, brave, strong, with some more surprises. It all looks too good to be true, and indeed she finds out he is not exactly human. But this will not stand in the way of such strong first love.
It was very easy for me to identify with Bella. She is addicted to reading. She loves literature and biology in school and does not need to work too hard to do well in them. She suffers from lack of coordination, and that makes her something between a total failure to danger to the surrounding in ball games (reminds me of the bowling game when I threw the ball backward, to the horror of my friends who stood behind me), and always feels like an outsider.
Wuthering Heights is Bella’s favorite book and it shows well in the story, with her romantic attraction to the mysterious, dark and dangerous.
The writer said in an interview she didn’t read almost any vampire book or watched any vampire series of movies and she tries very hard not to be influenced by them in the vampire world she built in the saga. And I am so glad she did it. Forget the disgusting smelly creatures of “The Historian”. Meyer’s vampires are divinely gorgeous, smell great, show special talents mentally and physically. If they only solve the problem of thirst to human blood, they will be perfect.
It is only the first book of the series. I already uploaded the next one to my kindle. It’s night, everybody’s fast asleep. In the quiet and dark it is easier to believe unnatural things than in daylight. Perfect time to cuddle on the reading recliner and start the second book. If it is as good as the first, I will probably not be seen for the next couple of days, and in the meantime, please do not disturb.