Book Review: Twilight by Stephanie Meyer (Twilight Saga #1)

I know I'm late to this one. Very, terribly late. Only fifteen years or so. But I've made it my job to check out this series, even though the hype is long-gone. Even the whole hate-hype has largely died down. So I'm going to have a look at the first book in the Twilight Saga, simply titled Twilight. Wish me luck and spoilers ahead.

Meet Bella, an ordinary girl moving to the small town of Forks, where she falls in love with a mysterious boy named Edward Cullen. She is soon finding out that there's more to him than meets the eye, and then finally finds out: Edward and the other Cullens are vampires. But not just any vampires, "vegetarian" vampires that don't eat human flesh. 

That's... honestly most of the book. Yeah, one of the main things I noticed about this one is the lack of a plot. It's mostly just Bella and Edward doing stuff, falling in love, et cetera. The main conflict doesn't come in until like the last third of the book or so, where a rogue "non-vegetarian" vampire decides that it's a good idea to chase after Bella to eat her. 

This made the book kind of boring. I don't mind idling about if it has much of a point or it's interesting, but not all of the things Bella and Edward did were. It's kind of just this bland romance. Talking about bland... Bella's character. God, I can't name a single personality trait of her's. She's such a blank slate. I guess she's supposed to maybe be the everygirl fans of the series can relate to, so they can imagine themselves as falling in love with this bad boy vampire, but for me it simply didn't work. She's just a whole bunch of nothing and I honestly do not see what Edward sees in her.

I don't see what she sees in Edward, either. Let's get the elephant out of the room: their relationship is downright creepy. There's, of course, the fact that Edward, while physically seventeen, is well over a hundred years old. So, yeah, nice going with the pedophilia there, Meyer. Then there's also just how he acts. He's such a creep. He literally watches her sleep at night, and it's framed as romantic and somehow Bella doesn't mind? What the hell? That's downright terrifying. 

With the romance that's very bland, the rest of the characters aren't very good, either. They're just kind of one-note. The only one I found myself really getting into in this story was Alice, who was really friendly and kind of awesome. But the others were definitely just not very engaging.

There's also of course the whole misrepresentation of Quileute mythology that I've seen brought up many times. I can't judge this myself, but I've seen enough people point it out to the point that it obviously is a problem. 

I don't recommend Twilight. I think I'll be checking out the other books in the series because I have all of them except for New Moon, but I don't recommend you yourself pick up this book, maybe unless if you're like really curious on what you've been missing out on like me. The characters are boring, the romance is stale, there's some very creepy undertones (well, overtones, actually) and misrepresentation of Native American folklore. Not recommended. I'm only giving it two stars because it was surprisingly easy to get through. 

Rating: 2/5