Warning: may contain spoilers

Have I missed something? Because I feel as though I’m the only person on the surface of the earth who thoroughly disliked this book. I will admit that I read it in 4 days and, as such, it is an easy read but an easy read does not a good book make.

There are a couple of good points: I could relate to Bella’s initial feelings of infatuation with Edward, and I think that was captured quite well. And the book picked up somewhat when Bella was being hunted but a book shouldn’t start to get interesting when there’s only a hundred or so pages left.

I felt that Meyer’s writing was rather poor, to start with, and it seemed as though she had written it in Word and used the thesaurus function to replace one word for another. It was also a little…clunky and hard to read to begin with. Again, her writing style picked up and started to flow better 100 or maybe 200 pages in, in my rather humble opinion.

The story, itself, is rather unoriginal – it’s basically the same story that’s been told many times before but replacing a human boy with a vampire. I think Edward’s vampirism and the danger it presents to Bella can be seen as a metaphor for how many parents would probably feel about their teenage daughters dating a teenage boy and how daunting and scary a first romance could feel for those involved.

I suppose it doesn’t help that I don’t like love stories in books. I love romantic films but can’t stand reading about romance (unless it’s the Romantic movement style of romance or the Gothic romance and not the love-story kind of Romance, if that makes sense).

At any rate, I suppose in some ways it was worth reading this book because now I know how I feel about it. Some people have commented on hating this book/series but have never read it and that’s not something I wanted to do.

I’d also like to add that, as a rule, I love vampires and that’s not what put me off at all.