Review: Twilight By Stephenie Meyer

There isn’t a single book on my shelf that has fluctuated between all ratings besides Twilight. Believe it or not, I actually have read Twilight 4 times. I used to hail from Shelfari.com and the first rating I ever gave Twilight was 5 stars. After I made the switch to GoodReads, I decided to give it 4 stars instead. So, recently I was browsing my GoodReads shelf (I often do that to clean up ratings), I noticed Twilight was sitting pretty at 4 stars and was on my “favorites” shelf. At the time I thought, “Wow, that’s not accurate at all. Maybe it deserves 3 stars?”

But I quickly decided, no, no, no…I’ll just do a fun little project and re-read the series and give them all better ratings. If your curious about the details of the project, stop on over here: Project: Hindsight. And hey, if you like what you see, won’t you subscribe? Yes? /end shameless self promotion.

The coolest thing about re-reading Twilight is that it has caused me to create really cool new shelves such as:

“Kill me now”

“Idiot heroine”

“This is *not* literature”

And my personal favorite: “Where’s my chocolate?”

One of the first things I noticed during this re-read was how incredibly boring it was. Bella is dull as a doorknob. And the first few chapters of the book are essentially a ‘Bitch, Moan, Complain’ session. So, we have Bella moving to Forks, WA because she wants her mother to be happy (more on that later). And she’s all like, “Ohhhh, I hate this place. It’s green. Ewww, it’s wet. FML.” And what’s one of the first things Bella does when she arrives in Forks? She cooks Charlie dinner. No, I don’t have an issue with a female character that enjoys cooking, but it is practically thrown in my face that Charlie can’t fend for himself; Bella has to cook. Well, what the hell was he doing before she arrived?! Oh, yeah, did anyone else realize that despite the fact that she says she is not allowed to call Charlie by his first name; she almost always calls him Charlie? WTF.

Bella goes to school and during lunch she first cast her eyes on the Cullen family. Her next period happens to be Biology (because that’s where you’d meet a vampire, right? Heh.) and as she walks past the fan Edward goes:

And she’s like, “WTF. Do I smell?” Little does she know that Eddie just wants to devourer her little, ivory skinned ass. His reaction is so off-putting that she cries when she gets back to her truck. All because Eddie doesn’t like her. Who the hell cares, Bella? Conceded much? Please do us all a favor and get over yourself. But no, she just obsesses with it.

“Edward Cullen didn’t come back to school. Everyday, I watched anxiously until the rest of the Cullens had entered the cafeteria without him.”

Meanwhile, poor Mike is trying to put the moves on Bella and invites her to a beach trip. Speaking of the beach trip, here is something the editors should have picked up on. When the beach trip is first brought up it’s supposed to be happening in two weeks. But, as Bella goes on and on about nothing in particular, a few pages later she mentions

“…just because he’d happened to look at me for the first time in a half-dozen weeks.”

Wait, what? Anyone notice something? Six weeks have passed and the beach trip is where? Not only that, but the girl’s choice dance was also two weeks away and here six weeks have passed…

“I was surprised he would remember the name; I’d mentioned it just once, almost two months ago.”

Anyway, moving on. Some random shit happens causing Edward to swoop in and save danger prone Bella. The worst thing about Twilightis how incredibly dependent Bella is on Edward. When she’s not with him, she is always thinking about him. And that doesn’t make any sense. She barely knows him. They’ve had like two or three conversations and she has thoughts like:

“And what was my other choice–to cut him out of my life? Intolerable. Besides, since I’d come to Forks, it really seemed like my life was about him.”
“It would cause me physical pain to be separated from him now.”
“You are my life. You’re the only thing it would hurt me to lose.”

And then, because Edward must always prove to Bella that he loves her more than she loves him, he pulls this line:

“Don’t you see? That’s what proves me right. I care the most because if I can do it—if leaving is the right thing to do, then I’ll hurt myself to keep from hurting you, to keep you safe.”

Are you kidding me? This is not love. But how could it be, with Edward torn between eating her and making out with her? Edward is a controlling creepy creeper. He had been watching her sleep for weeks before they started talking! Meyer are you condoning stalkish behavior?!

Not.Cool.

I once read that Stephenie Meyer had a dream and that is how Twilight was born. She says she actually started writing from chapter 13 (The Meadow) to the ending. Then, she went back and wrote the first half. It totally shows. While it’s true the entire book is a shit storm in action, the second half is noticeably worse. The first half can easily be summed up as “Bella’s Bitch Fest meets Creep-ward” and believe me when I say, it’s really not as bad as the second half. How is that even possible? I have no idea, but Meyer pulls that shit off flawlessly. And ya know? I have a theory on that. Because Meyer had a dream about Bella and Edward and their ‘true love’ and she went to work on the second half before the first, there is all this raw emotions, strange pet names, and banter that’s supposed to be romantic but fails miserably. I just felt terribly uncomfortable reading it. And to top it all off, it was so bad, like, eye bleeding bad! It made me so angry I actually pulled out a pen and started marking this damn book up. Don’t believe me? LMAO, seriously folks, I took notes. Feast your eyes on my personal copy of Toilette Twilight. That’s French for toilet, stolen from a GoodReads friend. But, I think the French word works pretty well. Hey, if you say it fast enough it sounds dangerously like Twilight. #Justsaying.

I’ve also noticed a trend with Meyer. She doesn’t write fight scenes. There was a huge build up for a fight with James and we see nothing of the fight. Bella is informed of what happened after the fact. Good job, Stephenie. You totally ripped off your readers there. So, Carlisle is sitting there fixing up Bella on the ground (and he randomly has Morphine, by the way -_-) and Bella is in the process of passing out. But first, Carlisle has a little conversation about Bella’s mom and she somehow finds the will to mention to Alice what she knows about James. Like, really? Go to sleep Bella. You talk too much.

I won’t bore you with the details of the ending. I’m sure you already know. But I do want to say that Bella’s mother is the most selfish character (next to Bella, of course). First she ships her off to Forks so she could be with her new husband. And no, do not tell me Bella chose to do that. Renee is the parent and it’s *her* job to make sacrifices. Then, when Bella is in the hospital after the fight with James, she acts like she can’t be bothered to stay with Bella.

Then she sighed and glaced guiltily over her shoulder at the big, round clock on the wall.
“Do you need to go?”
She bit her lip. “Phil’s supposed to call in a little while…I didn’t know you were going to wake up…”

Really?? Really, Renee?! Your daughter almost died and you are seriously acting like this? Un-effin’-believable. Oh, but this crap gets better:

“I’ll be back soon. I’ve been sleeping here, you know,” she announced, proud of herself.

Huh? Do you want a cookie for that? It’s your job!

“I can stay if you need me.”
“No, Mom, I’ll be fine. Edward will be with me.”
She looked like that might be why she wanted to stay.
“I’ll be back tonight.” Its sounded as much like a warning as it sounded like a promise, and she glanced at Edward again as she said it.

And what does she think Edward and Bella are going to do? She has a broken leg, broken ribs, and cracks in her skull. C’mon now!
Then Edward takes Bella to prom, he kisses her neck. The end.
Would I recommend this? Bahahahahahah! You’re shitting me, right? I’m about to go do this to my bookshelf:

But I’ll tell you what I recommend. I recommend we all do this to our copies of Toilette.

Amen.

*****BONUS TIME*****

I love bonuses! They are so much fun! Have you seen the Twilight parody by The Hillywood Show? No?! Go watch now!!
Twilight
New Moon
Eclipse
I personally love the Eclipse one.

Oh, and if you want you can hop on over to my GoodReads version of the review here and check out all 52 of my status updates. It is very pic heavy. XD

Next up: New Moon is on the chopping block.