So I lied....

Yet another activity I'll be partaking in on this blog is my own reviews of books, movies, tv shows, etc. I am qualified as a reviewer by virtue of the fact that I say mean things sometimes. So without further ado, I present to you....my very first review!



Twilight and New Moon, by Stephenie Meyer
I will start by saying I am not the target audience for YA fiction (though I will admit that I have read and thoroughly enjoyed all of the Harry Potter books). However, I'd heard of Twilight through its mentions on gofugyourself and knew that it was a popular series about beautiful vampires in love or some such nonsense, and that it was somewhat controversial. "Somewhat controversial" are magic words for me, so I was intrigued. And then one my Dear Friends, who teaches history to High School Monsters in North Carolina sent me a copy of Twilight as a graduation present. So I read it, and then went out and bought the second book in the series, New Moon. Did I like the books? Yes and no.
We'll start with the positive. The books are compulsively readable. You can sit there and blow through 100 pages and not even realize it. And the idea is original- "vegetarian" vampires (ie they drink animal blood only and don't hurt people) in the Pacific Northwest, one of whom falls in love with a human female. And despite the fact that the characters are neither terribly relatable or even fleshed out, I found myself really curious to see where the story went, so curious that I went out and bought the second book.
And now the negative. The characters are weakly developed. The female lead, Bella, has no discernible traits besides being a klutz. The "love" between Bella and Edward seems to have developed after spending almost no time together. Edward "loves" Bella because she has a personal scent that is attractive to him, and Bella "loves" Edward because he is beautiful. When Bella actually develops a meaningful friendship with Jacob, another boy, she sees their relationship as a pale imitation of the real thing that she had with Edward, and cannot bring herself to love him as anything more than a friend in spite of the fact he's infinitely nicer to her than Edward is.
The most disturbing aspect of the books, however, is the proto-abusive relationship between the two main characters. Edward is extremely moody, controlling, jealous and prone toward violent responses. He isolates her from her peers, he sneaks into her room and watches her sleep at night. He loses his temper and treats her coldly with no warning. Bella fits the profile of a woman susceptible to abuse- lonely and insecure, she feels undeserving of love. She is socially isolated from her peers, has a distant father and a flaky, man-dependent mother. This is not the relationship model we want tween and teen girls to model!
As to whether I will read the third and fourth installments in the series, the jury is still out. My funds are limited and I would rather spend what I have on $6 beers at beachy bars while the weather is still nice. That being said, I've heard that the next book gets all creepy about vampire-human sex and is an allegory to encourage premarital virginity among young girls (the author is Mormon). I hate to admit that this intrigues me, even I will more than likely find it annoying....