Book Review - Twilight

Ok, so Amy and I have finally given into the craze.  I'm not quite sure how it happened, but to tell the truth I had been pondering drinking the Kool Aid for a while.  Once Amy expressed her interest, I gulped.  Faced with the impending hospital stay and subsequent recovery we decided to take up recreational reading again, as I've previously mentioned in the last book review, posted here.  Well, who knew we'd missed it so?  Amy and I both being avid readers before life (i.e. kids, jobs, and Masters courses) imprisoned us, were eager to get this "fun" and "relaxing" part of ourselves back and have been pouring over the spoils of our last Half Price Books trip.  Yeah, technically one could view it as yet again adding something new into our already busy schedules, but this is something that brings relaxation so it doesn't count, I think.  But I digress again, onto the review.


Well, I finally finished Twilight.  No, I'm not an adolescent teenage girl.  No, I'm not one of those crazed moms of an adolescent teenage girl.  But boy oh boy am I hooked into these books now.  Yeah they are written about teenagers, high school, first loves, etc. but it's more than that.  It's kind of hard to explain, but they are just awesome.  In addition to the themes mentioned above it also is a Romeo & Juliet, forbidden love story, but retold with he added touch of something people have always found fascinating - obviously I'm talking about vampires.  This isn't anything new, think Ann Rice and her famous Interview with a Vampire, or duh, Bram Stoker and Dracula.  People have always been fascinated with vampires.  Out of all the monsters they are the coolest right?  I mean, immortality, super speed, near invincibility, mind-reading just to name a few of the "powers" attributed to them.  Plus you've got the mystery and intrigue of being relegated to night/darkness along with the strangely sensual nature of them and bam!  What's there not to love?  Mix these things together, along with Stephenie Meyer's gift for storytelling and character development and you've got the explosive result that is now a phenomenon, having spawned other similar novels and TV show's (on a side note check out The Gates on ABC Sunday night, it's good!).  She's been able to restart, and yet at the same time reinvent/change/adapt, an already successful genre.  That in and of itself is a pretty admirable feat.  In a way she's very much like J.K. Rowling, a regular person who just happened to have all of this floating around in her head.

So the above doesn't say much about the book itself but I don't want to give away too much.  I found it, personally, to be one of those books that absorbs you and actually brings you into the book.  One you have an extremely hard time putting down.  Yeah, it's about teens but in a way it's not, the story is so much more and actually as the book progresses it revolves less and less around this factor and becomes just an enthralling story.  So, if that (and the screaming teens/media hype) is what is keeping you away (and admittedly it kept me away for a long time) get over yourself and give it a try.  You won't be sorry.  Hmmm, it was easier to review a book this time, I hope that translates into a better review!

We have yet to see the movies, although I am crazy eager to  Instead we are going to read all of the books first.  They are so incredibly good, it is one of the instances where we want to know the whole story and experience it in it's true form before visually experiencing it.  I will begin New Moon tonight (Amy of course has finished it already) and I am excited to continue.  Stay tuned for that review very soon, I don't anticipate taking long to blow through this next volume!

All is well, and totally sucked in (get it??? a vampire reference!  HA!), in Drosche Land.