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highly recommended |
Isabella Swan's move to Forks, a small, perpetually rainy town in Washington, could have been the most boring move she ever made. But once she meets the mysterious and alluring Edward Cullen, Isabella's life takes a thrilling and terrifying turn. Up until now, Edward has managed to keep his vampire identity a secret in the small community he lives in, but now nobody is safe, especially Isabella, the person Edward holds most dear. The lovers find themselves balanced precariously on the point of a knife-between desire and danger. Deeply romantic and extraordinarily suspenseful, Twilight captures the struggle between defying our instincts and satisfying our desires. This is a love story with bite.
Intense and Fantastic! 
When a friend recommended this book to me I didn't think anything of it. Then another friend...and another...and finally I gave it a go and OMG am I happy that I did. This book was probably one of the most intense, exciting, and romantic stories I have read in a while. I love the characters, their complicated relationships, and how it comes together in a sort of supernatural Romeo/Juliet kind of way. A die hard Buffy fan in my teens (I am 24 now), this book has reignited my obsession for vampire love stories.
Love it or hate it, you'll probably still read it.
I've read many glorious reviews for this book and some pretty bad ones as well. I think this book and this series does an excellent job of getting your imagination working as well as sitting kids down to read, which is no easy feat these days.
I for one enjoyed this book. However, I am all for romance novels.
page turner 
I am a librarian and avid book reader with a fondness for Young Adult literature. Twilight had me recalling the reading I did as a 13-14 year old, as it has many of the hallmarks of gothic (not goth) romance: The young woman arrives at a new place uncertain and out of place, and meets a sophisticated man who seems to initially dislike her for reasons hidden to her. The unlikely duo develops an attraction, with a fair amount of internal angst by the female and misunderstandings/conflicts to complicate things. Then the female comes to some kind of peril (perhaps supernatural) and the gentleman saves her.
That being said, the book takes these elements and turns them into a thoroughly modern page turner with a supernatural twist. It is not formulaic and is very engaging--the internal dialogue of Bella rings very true to me with the intensity and roller coaster of emotion of falling deeply in love for the first time and navigating the personal and social conflicts that can come with that.
There is an interesting dichotomy of Bella's strong independence within her family and in general with her helplessness (for lack of a better word) with being in love with Edward (to the extent she forgets to breathe frequently around him). But then first love can feel just that engrossing and intoxicating.
I can relate to that feeling, but I found myself at times impatient with Bella's prolonged inner turmoil (as I would be impatient with myself if I could revisit some of my teen years). And the romanticism and flowery words of Edward's character was at times too exaggerated for me.
The vampire thing to me does as Buffy the Vampire Slayer did--it takes the perils and pitfalls we deal with (especially as teens) and amps them up to a higher level--the issues are the same, just played with at higher stakes. So don't let that scare you off. For me it was a fun read.
Be aware this is the first of four books, but you won't be totally left hanging if you don't read further.
The first half is enjoyable but the second half is absurd. On the whole this book is entirely mediocre. Not recommended 
Bella is a new student in high school when she meets inhumanly handsome Edward. Despite their initial antagonism, the two are drawn inexorably into a passionate romance with one major complication: Edward is a vampire. The Twilight series is a recent young adult phenomenon with a bastion of rabid fans as well as many critics. Personally, I found Twilight neither good enough to love or bad enough to joyfully mock. Although it is fluffy and immature, the book begins well--but midway through it takes a sharp turn into the absurd and quickly degenerates. As a result, this book is entirely mediocre, and I don't recommend it.
The tragedy of Twilight (for me, at least) is that it's an enjoyable book go horribly wrong. That isn't to say that the premise is brilliant, but there is something good there. The book begins with a standard "new student" YA trope, and Bella is an unremarkable and vaguely irritating protagonist. But things turn around when she meets Edward. Enigmatic and mercurial, he is immediately attractive and secretive enough to be fascinating. The early stages of his relationship with Bella is also intriguing--his vampirism is comically predictable, but the gradual revelation of his personality is much more complex and interesting. So the first half of the book goes on: the protagonist is annoying, the prose is lengthy fluff in dire need of an editor, but Edward is intriguing and the story captures the reader's interest.
Until the middle of the book, that is. Almost exactly halfway through, Edward steps into direct sunlight and sparkles. Sparkling vampires epitomizes the Twilight series's foolish fluff, but it also marks the change in Twilight from enjoyment to pure absurdity. Edward sparkles, and then in quick succession Edward cleanly dumps his entire life story on Bella, Edward turns out to be a creepy stalker, Edward and Bella fall madly in love, an antagonist shows up for a long slew of action sequences that feel out of place against the rest of the book, some predictable and exaggerated angst ensues, and then Bella begins her campaign to have Edward turn her into a vampire before she gets "old." The protagonist remains irritating, the prose is still rambling fluff, but there is no longer a fascinating character or any gradual developments to make the book worthwhile or even enjoyable. Even the absurdity is more frustrating than it is funny: unrealistic, stereotypical, and (in Bella's premature, all-consuming love and Edward's stalkerish tendencies) a bit disturbing.
I liked Edward in the first half of the book, and wish that the second half continued in the same vein. Failing that, I wish that Twilight were as wonderful as fans claim or as laughably bad as detractors say. If it were either extreme, it might be fun to read. As it is, Twilight is enjoyable and then absurd without reaching an extreme at either end. It is conflicted. It is middling. It is average and entirely mediocre. It certainly doesn't deserve the fervor that it's received, but it's not particularly fun to mock, either. I'm not sorry to have read this book, and there's no strong reason to avoid it--there are worse novels, and this one is a brief waste of time. Neither do I recommend it. The book just isn't worth reading and there are many better YA and vampire novels out there.
reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
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