65 of 99 members found this review helpful.
“I'm reading this right now because I've met so many adult women who are so obsessed with this book. I wanted to see what all the fuss is about.
And it's shit. Utter shit.
There are so many things wrong with it, I haven't time or space to discuss them all. But the worst part is the protagonist/narrator, Bella Swan. She's whiny, self-pitying, dull, and completely self-absorbed. She has no interests or passions to speak of until she gets caught up in her obsessive love for a vampire named Edward.
Edward, for his part, is obsessed with Bella because she's the one human he's met whose mind he cannot read. What Edward doesn't realize, however, is that there is nothing there worth reading. Bella may be mysterious to him, but the laughable part is that she's just a dumb, shallow, whiny teenaged girl; tThere is no mystery.
The plot is thin, the premise poorly-realized, and there are glaring lapses in basic logic to be found throughout the book. Other characters, settings, and situations are just flimsy backdrops against which the Edward-Bella folie au deux plays out.
The only explanation I have for Twilight's popularity--especially with fans over the age of 14 or 15--is that it offers up a fantasy in which a girl with all the personality, drive, and self-confidence of a clod of dirt can still be, singled out, above all other girls, to be the Eternal One True Love of a truly extraordinary young man. You don't have to be talented, or cool, or funny, or have any plans for your future; you don't have to be graceful or have great clothes or drive an expensive car; you don't have to have any friends or social skills or an interesting family--he'll sweep you off your feet and love you, and only you.
Trouble is, Edward is manipulative, controlling, and engages in the kind of behavior that would send any sane woman fleeing. When a guy lets himself into your house--without asking, without telling you--just so he can watch you sleep? That's not romantic; that's stalker behavior. When a guy makes it clear that he could easily lose control and kill you, even though he "loves" you? That's not sensitivity; that's horrifying. When a guy tells you that he knows what's best for you, and that you need his protection? That's not love; it's control.
In real life, the shared obsession (I'm not dignifying it with the word "love") Edward and Bella have would be considered an unhealthy, even abusive, relationship. It's not romantic, not in any worthy sense of the term. So when I see teenage girls and grown women say how they wish they could find their Edward, or that more men were like Edward, I can only cringe.”
