Red Room Where the Writers Are

All right, before I start this review let me note: my rants/reviews tend to go all over the place. With this, I will TRY to keep things concise, but no promises. For another, I have read Twilight cover to cover. Twice. No skimming, no skipping, but have actually read and absorbed the entire book. This review is for the first book. Not for the entire series. But there will be more reviews to come once I read the others (oh Gods the pain). These are my personal opinions of the book. MINE. Got it? Good? All right, here we go.

Why did I read this book? Well, mostly for the challenge of it. I'd heard various reviews online about it and thought: this sounds like it might be a challenge to read. So I borrowed it from the local library and read it. A 500-page book usually takes me only several hours to read and absorb it. This one...took me four days. Four. Days. Mostly because I got frustrated and fed-up with several things, but I continued. I continued so that when I wrote this review, I can gleefully point out that I have read the entire book more than once. I even read the beginning part for New Moon. When I set the book down, the first thing that came to me was:

This is the most insipid piece of drivel I've ever had the misfortune to read.

Let me tell you why.

First off, the character Bella. Now, I'll admit that at first I was a bit hesitant about her. I'd heard she was a Mary Sue, with no personality of her own. Well...people were right. From the moment Isabella Swan sets eyes on Edward Cullen, her life slowly begins to revolve entirely around him. She even says, "Cut him out of my life? Intolerable. Besides, since I'd come to Forks, it really seemed like my life was about him." (pg. 251) I don't know what kind of message that sends to someone else but to me, it's disturbing. Bella is a character who can't seem to survive without some sort of love interest in her life. For example, when Bella begins her first day at school at Forks, she attracts the attention of Eric, who offers to show her to her next class (pg. 16). Although her reaction to him is negative, he doesn't seem to take the hint as any guy would. Then, we skip over the school to get to that ever-important scene that sets the tone for the rest of the book:

Their first meeting.

Bella is instantly awed and amazed at the outer beauty of the Cullens family. She goes into vivid, detailed explanations of their looks (pgs. 18 & 19) and immediately takes an attraction to Edward. Now, I can understand, this is a school crush by a 16-year-old girl, so I go with it. But as I read on, I start to wonder...where is Bella's personality? Why are all these kids being nice to her after she basically ignores them in favor of chasing after Edward? If someone did that, usually others wouldn't have anything to do with them. But I'm making assumptions. Anyway, as the book rolls on, we start to see a little bit of Bella's personality coming through. Just a little. She's clumsy, she's a little sarcastic, she has image issues that most teenage girls have, but whenever Edward becomes her lab partner, she spends the entire time agonizing over him and analyzing his smallest movements. Truthfully, the entire book follows this: him doing something and her angsting over it like no one's business.

Moving onto the character of Edward...I'm sorry to say, but he's an Abusive Boyfriend-in-Training. To watch a girl while she sleeps at night is not healthy (pg. 293). To sneak into her house and somehow magically know the exact location of her truck keys in a laundry pile is not healthy (pg. 243). To know the location of the spare key to her house without her telling him is not good (pg. 292). Seeing as how Edward admits he can't read Bella's mind, how else would he know all of these things if he hasn't been watching her? That is also called "stalking" and it isn't something romantic. It isn't something you should want to happen to you. It's dangerous and has resulted in a lot of women getting hurt. Also, he ignores Bella's wishes and makes many of her decisions for her. For example, when she's in Port Angeles with her friends and wishes to go home, he says no and takes her to get something to eat instead (pg. 165). He also magically knows where she and her friends are, even though Bella didn't tell him (also pg. 165). This also sets off alarm bells.

Now I know that Edward is a vampire and we don't know what kind of powers he has, but come on. That is stalker. That is a future abusive boyfriend. And from what I've heard from future books, Edward's "love" only gets worse. You do not manhandle your girlfriend like she's a piece of meat. You also do not badger her with personal questions she may or may not want to answer. That's just being a jerk and it makes me want to pop him one. Another reason I want to pop him one? He's the worst-written Gary Stu I've ever seen. He not only has the love of the main female protagonist, he's also incredibly strong, incredibly smart, and (as Bella states pg. 261 after Edward steps out into the sun), "A perfect statue, carved in some unknown stone, smooth like marble, glittering like crystal." And then she goes on and on about how beautiful he is and I really got a little sick of it.

Which brings me to my next point: SPARKLING. VAMPIRES. Where the hell did that come from? Seriously. One of the staples of vampire lore as far back as I can remember has been this: vampires CANNOT go out into the sunlight. Although I can appreciate the author trying to come up with something new and different, at least EXPLAIN why they sparkle ("literally sparkled, like thousands of tiny diamonds were embedded in the surface" pg. 260). But there is no explanation. No rhyme or reason to this phenomenon. I don't know about you, but I'd like to know why the author is suddenly turning the world of the vampire on its ear. I really would.

That's all for now, my back hurts and I'm getting cheesed just thinking about all the drivel in this book. Stay tuned for part 2.