Please note: due to the large amount of commentary I seem to have on this book so far, I have decided to split these blog posts into parts! Chapters 6 through to 24 will appear in later blog posts.
It was the year 2005. my hair was black and I wore more eyeliner than anyone ever should in their entire lifetime. I lived in skinny jeans, hoodies and converse sneakers. I was fifteen years old the year Twilight hit the shelves and it was really the first YA novel I ever read. And let me tell you, I was obsessed! I was in love! It was all encompassing and true!
I have since watched the movies of course, the nostalgia gets the better of me at times and although the acting is subpar and the idea of a 100+ year old vampire being attracted to a teenage girl does send up some red flags, I still, somehow, enjoy them for what they are. I have not however, picked up these books since those fateful teenage years all those moons ago. So here it is, I have challenged myself to reread Twilight. Yes, only the first one, I’m not some masochistic lion, you guys.
Below are my thoughts on Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. 14 years since I last read it.
Chapters 1-5
If you haven’t read or watched Twilight, you’re probably the luckiest person in the world and if you have read or watched Twilight, my condolences. Here is a quick synopsis for the aforementioned luckiest people alive.
Bella Swan is your super average teenage girl who has decided to move to a town named Forks to live with her father, Charlie. She goes to school and meets a family of vampires. She falls in love with one of them. Ridiculousness ensues.
So to start with, it appears, in my opinion, that Bella Swan is a wet blanket of a human being who is so self involved and self deprecating that it makes me want to gouge my own eyes out so that I won’t have to read one more word about how badly she “doesn’t want to be noticed” or how she “doesn’t communicate well.” Not to mention I couldn’t help but liken her to a freshly born calf, tripping over its own legs with the amount of times she references her clumsiness!
Now I tried to enjoy the first five chapters, I really did! But not only was Bella completely unlikable, but there was also quite a few times the author used words and phrases that could only be described as problematic. Some of these gems are as follows.
(Regarding Bella’s father, a police officer, no longer removing the bullets from his gun when he gets home)
“I guess he considered me old enough not to shoot myself by accident, and not depressed enough to shoot myself on purpose”
and this zinger
(Regarding Edward talking to Bella)
“He enunciated every syllable, as if he was talking to someone mentally handicapped”
Eeeeekkkkk….
There was also a point where Bella actually thinks that her too pale, white skin will cause her to be noticed and ridiculed. As a white woman myself, I’m not even going to touch that one, but it certainly reeks of ignorance. Now not only is Bella extremely self conscious, she also comes across as extremely pretentious! At one point, the character Jessica is trying to befriend her and she literally thinks the following:
“I couldn’t remember her name, so I smiled and nodded as she prattled about teachers and classes. I didn’t try to keep up.”
Wow. Just, wow.
Bella is so incredibly self involved that all she really cares about is how everything around her is going to impact her life. She has little to no care for anything other than herself. Oh. Well, that is until Edward Cullen makes his appearance. In which their first interaction quite literally only involves him “glaring down” at her, no words are exchanged at all. But from that moment on, she is infatuated. She is so ridiculously emotionally involved that she then starts having all these weird dreams about a guy she’s known for maybe a month and for most of that time he is actively trying to avoid her. But hey, he’s hot right? That means it’s ok when he’s being a jerk! Edward eventually decides he doesn’t want to stay away from her anymore, however he makes a point of constantly telling her that he isn’t a good guy and that she should be scared of him. (GIRL, RUUUUUN!)
But again, he’s like, so hot right?
Chapters 6 – 10 coming soon. Whenever I can bring myself to continue reading this garbage.
Reading Sumpton 
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