Twilight (Four Stars)

Juvenile Fiction

Twilight
Stephenie Meyer
Little, Brown, and Company
©2005
ISBN 0-316-16017-2
498 pages

I have been going through a ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ craze lately, maybe that’s why my sister, Janna, recommended this book to me. Meyer’s debut novel is a wondrous tale of love and vampires. The vampire craze that may have begun with Anne Rice’s "Interview with a Vampire" has continued to swell, decades after the fact. There are many different views of a vampire, and this book is no different.

Edward and his family live in a sheltered and sunless spot on the Washington coast. For the sake of appearances, he and his ‘siblings’ attend the local high school, where he meets Isabella. Their first encounter didn’t go too well; he doesn’t drink human blood, but she smelled positively delicious to him. It was after he saves her life that they begin to slowly fall in love, kept in check by the obvious: she was a woman, he was a vampire. She is embraced by his family, but on an outing one day they come into contact with other vampires, one who immediately decides that killing her is all he wants to do.

I blazed through this book and thoroughly enjoyed it. The love scenes are tenderly written, and my heart melted again and again throughout their impossible path through life. I love reading about vampires, maybe it’s the Romania in me. She does have three in the series and I look forward to reading them as well.