Twilight Review

    Bella decided to move in with her father, Charlie, at his home in Forks, a very rainy and dark small town. She meets the mysterious and extremely handsome Edward Cullen, and she is determined to uncover what he is hiding the closer they get. However, as their relationship develops, she and the people she cares about get put in increasing danger. She never expected life in Forks to be exciting or risky, and now she may not be able to go back to her simple life.

    Keep in mind that everyone has their own opinion. This review is only my opinion, and you may have your own, different one. I would take into consideration what I say, but do not make a decision about the book solely based off of this review. Let's begin:

    This saga is extremely popular, especially after the movie adaptations began releasing in 2008, and you most likely have heard of it already. I can already tell that the popularity is highly deserved after just the first book. Stephenie Meyer does an absolutely fantastic job in so many important aspects of a book. I could hardly find anything that truly bothered me with this book, and everything I did find is very minor and/or debatable.

    Perhaps the thing Meyer did best, in my opinion, was character building, development, and interactions. I was thoroughly impressed by how well all three of these were done. I think all of her characters were very well built from the beginning, whether I liked their personalities or not. Then, as the secrets started getting revealed, all of the major characters grew. Their changes did not happen right away nor were they unbelievable as has happened in and ruined so many books. I was able to see small signs of the changes as they began, and they were realistic (or as realistic as you can get in a book with fictional creatures). The interactions were AMAZING! Let me take a moment to compose myself so I do not fangirl over them as I did throughout the whole book because the interactions are just that great. Due to the complexity of each main character, their relationships and encounters were always super interesting to read. In some scenes, you can feel the tension, others you can feel the anxiety, and in the rest you can feel whatever emotion is meant to be felt. The character interactions allowed me to feel all of these emotions and to have a deeper bond with the characters. I felt like I could really understand them. The characterization in this book is unbelievable!

    The writing style was simple, yet not so simple as to take away from the book. It is easy to understand and, if you are like me and read out loud, easy to not stumble over.

I really enjoyed the author's take on vampires. I thought it was classic, but unique (hopefully that makes sense). There were some aspects of the vampires that was knew to me, but she did not make them so estranged from the classic vampires that they are almost a different creature altogether. I appreciates this well-balanced mix.

    The story itself is simple, but very alluring because of how well written it is. It is kind of like the cover in that simple, but beautiful feel. I never got bored with the plot. It had a good balance of different things such as action, romance, and buildup. I feel like there is something that everyone can enjoy and relate to at some point in the plot.

    I would say one of the only things that I wish was different would be seeing Bella fix her relationship with her father. This is not something that we readers get to see happen, and I wish we did. I did not like that, when their relationship was fractured in such a harsh way, it was suddenly fixed later on. I understand there was a passing of time that readers do not see, but I feel like this specific thing from that time was something we should have seen. That is really my only true complaint.

    Overall, I definitely recommend reading this. It is worth the time. I cannot wait to finish the rest of the saga, and I am highly anticipating Midnight Sun's release. The only reason this review was not longer was because you can ask me if basically anything in the book was done exceptionally well, and the answer will be yes. One more recommendation is that, if you see the movies before reading, erase them from your memory. The movies are very different than the books in many ways, so do not expect the same things to happen in the book necessarily. 

Rating: 5/5 stars

Author: Stephenie Meyer

Publisher: Little, Brown

# of Pages: 498

Genre: YA, Romance, Fantasy

Series: Twilight Saga