Twilight

My daughter has been pushing for me to read the Twilight series of books with her. She is 25. She also hates reading. There are very few authors that she will read. She absolutely became obsessed with this book series. She spent most of two weeks begging me for money to buy another book and bugging me to start reading it with her.

I finally gave in. I am glad that I did. The first book is called Twilight. The book is a love story between a vampire and a human. Stephenie Meyer did an excellent job in creating a novel that is an intriquing page turner. The love story is believable. The writing style is not what is usually encouraged in that she goes into much more detail than most writers. The editors did a great job catching errors. Readers are not overwhelmed with grammar errors and can simply enjoy the story. The book is 498 pages covering a time frame of only a couple of months in the lives of Edward and Bella.

Most of the pages are dedicated to only a few weeks. There are times that the time frame will skip several days to a week at a time. Near the end, it even skips several months. The time jumps do not weaken the story. They actually are not that noticeable until you start really thinking about how fast things are moving.

The writer includes so many details that you do not have to guess at much. The reader is given the exact color of Edward's eyes and what the difference in color means. The story is so engaging that the reader feels like they are right there in high school with Edward and Bella.

The 498 pages ended way too quickly. Luckily for me, my daughter already has the entire series so I can start on book two soon. I got so engrossed in the book, that I would stay up late at night just to try to find a little more reading time. Considering that there were often eight people in my household during that time, finding reading time was definitely not easy. I read the book in less than two days. I would definitely have to give this book a 10 out of 10.

I was a bit worried about the intended audience. There is definitely a sense of sexual tension between Edward and Bella. They rarely touch and sex is not a part of their relationship during the book. Bella's parents are in need of a little filling out character wise. I hope that my gut is right and these characters will have a little more light shed on them as the series progresses. Of course, since the intended audience is teens, that may not be the case. They would be a little better role models if they were not such flat characters though. The teen characters are pretty well rounded characters. They are not as clique as you might expect from a teen novel.

The intended audience may be teens, but I know a 25 year old mother and even an older mom and grandma that actually enjoyed reading the book. Now, on to the next book in the series.