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Review edited on Sept 14 2020 due to an unexpected twilight saga reread.
You know what's worse than twilight? the pandemic. Hence why I reread this book the other day. If right now we were living in a normal time and the world wasn't so wrong, I don't think that I would be in this position right now, writing this bit.
I think the idea has been nagging at me for a couple of months now. Out of curiosity, I just wanted to know my reaction as a 24 years old adult rereading a book that I loved so much 12 years ago.
A couple of months ago I actually rewatched the movies, it was a terrible experience for me and surprisingly, my experience of rereading the books now isn't as bad as it was with the movie adaptions.
Don't get me wrong this book is still Bad. But it's better than the other twilight books. I like the fact that it's just Bella & Edward (I ABSOLUTELY hate the love triangles), it's simple. You just have to deal with a very boring 17 year old girl and unfortunately a very boring vampire.
The fact that Bella is an infamous mary sue doesn't bother me very much in this book, I think at some point she addressed the issue about why the boys in Forks thought she was interesting, which made it seem like she was or Stephenie Meyer was aware that people being attracted to Bella just doesn't make any fucking sense.
Because... how do i put it without being crude... she's ... as interesting.. as a piece of cardboard.
The lack of personality or any interest at all makes it really hard for me to relate or like her. And the funny thing is that Renee, her Mom, at some point said that Bella is very 'mature'. To quote: "My mom always says I was born thirty-five years old and I get more middle-aged every year." . Which to me is so funny because if this book was just a big self-insert for Stephenie Meyer, it'd make so much sense, then. Guess how old she was when this book came out? 32. I feel like maybe she realized that she couldn't write a realistic teenager, so this is just a massive cop out.
Like you know it's Bad with a capital B when a character is so uninteresting and her only personality traits are:
1. She likes to read books
2. She hates cold places
3. She is extremely Clumsy to the point that she's, I quote "almost disabled" whatever the fuck that means.
4. Have absolutely no respect or interest to be kind to her friends because they're not 'beautiful & mysterious' like the Cullens and she tends to have quite a negative and pardon by french, bitchy outlook about her normal human friends.
5. So pale that she jokes about being half albino all the time, again, whatever the fuck that means. Like we get it Bella, you're White.
I'm not even going to go over her relationship with Edward because I just don't see anything interesting there. He wants to eat her, he can't read her mind which then makes her special, somehow, inexplicably she smells better than the other human beings to him, none of it makes any sense but whatever.
Let me put a few quotes here that rendered me absolutely speechless because there's nothing sexier than a guy who wants to eat you and subtly threatens to hurt you if you don't walk away:
"Did you ever think that maybe my number was up the first time, with the van, and that you've been interfering with fate" I speculated, distracting myself.
"That wasn't the first time," he said, and his voice was hard to hear. I stared at him in amazement, but he was looking down. "Your number was up the first time I met you."
"To me, it was like you were some kind of demon, summoned straight from my own personal hell to ruin me. The fragrance coming off your skin…I thought it would make me deranged that first day. In that one hour, I thought of a hundred different ways to lure you from the room, to get you alone. And I fought them each back, thinking of my family, what I could do to them. I had to run out, to get away before I could speak the words that would make you follow…"
"I was appalled. I couldn't believe I had put us in danger after all, put myself in your power - you of all people. As if I needed another motive to kill you."
"I could kill you quite easily, Bella, simply by accident."
Et cetera. You get the gist.
Edward having issues about being a vampire, not having a soul, being afraid of hurting / killing Bella but continuously reminding her that he could kill her, and then being extremely protective and abusive is a recurring theme in this series. Aside from all that, he's not even that interesting as a character, and unfortunately not even as a vampire. I don't have issues with him sparkling under the sun, frankly I don't give a shit. What I'm having issues with is the fact that he lives for 90 years and he just... exists. There's nothing interesting going on in his life at all. He collects CDs? Is that fucking it, Edward. What else do you do beside all that and being all sad about being a monster?
You know what, they kinda do deserve each other, actually.
Part of me understands the appeal of this book, especially for myself back when I was 12. I liked the idea that there's a girl who's being presented as this imperfect, unbalanced, and anti-social person but the world around her treats her like she's not any of those things, that she is desired and liked by other people despite all of her unpleasantness and imperfection (as unrealistic as that is). I think as a teenager, I had that kind of immature outlook about the world, like I was living in a teenage rom-com and someday i would find *love like this* as cringey as that sounds.
Anyway, all the negative points aside, I'm glad that I'm doing this reread fest. Yes this book is not good, but I realised that I sort...of... kinda... liked it? The things that I like about it is not so much about the story or the characters themselves, but I like the nostalgia that it brings. I like that it's some sort of a guilty pleasure for me to read it (at least for this first instalment because ooh boy, Eclipse & Breaking Dawn are bad ) and bitch and complain and scathingly talk about it on twitter.
Another part about what makes this whole thing fun for me is that it's a nice distraction from the current issues that are going on in the world. Because you know what? I'd rather read a bad romance book than think about life right now, that's how horrible everything is at the moment. And I really couldn't recommend doing this enough, read those awful books you have a love and hate relationship with & write down angry notes/reviews for it. It's fun.
Going back to the first sentence, you know what's worse than twilight? the fucking pandemic.
You know what's worse than twilight? the pandemic. Hence why I reread this book the other day. If right now we were living in a normal time and the world wasn't so wrong, I don't think that I would be in this position right now, writing this bit.
I think the idea has been nagging at me for a couple of months now. Out of curiosity, I just wanted to know my reaction as a 24 years old adult rereading a book that I loved so much 12 years ago.
A couple of months ago I actually rewatched the movies, it was a terrible experience for me and surprisingly, my experience of rereading the books now isn't as bad as it was with the movie adaptions.
Don't get me wrong this book is still Bad. But it's better than the other twilight books. I like the fact that it's just Bella & Edward (I ABSOLUTELY hate the love triangles), it's simple. You just have to deal with a very boring 17 year old girl and unfortunately a very boring vampire.
The fact that Bella is an infamous mary sue doesn't bother me very much in this book, I think at some point she addressed the issue about why the boys in Forks thought she was interesting, which made it seem like she was or Stephenie Meyer was aware that people being attracted to Bella just doesn't make any fucking sense.
Because... how do i put it without being crude... she's ... as interesting.. as a piece of cardboard.
The lack of personality or any interest at all makes it really hard for me to relate or like her. And the funny thing is that Renee, her Mom, at some point said that Bella is very 'mature'. To quote: "My mom always says I was born thirty-five years old and I get more middle-aged every year." . Which to me is so funny because if this book was just a big self-insert for Stephenie Meyer, it'd make so much sense, then. Guess how old she was when this book came out? 32. I feel like maybe she realized that she couldn't write a realistic teenager, so this is just a massive cop out.
Like you know it's Bad with a capital B when a character is so uninteresting and her only personality traits are:
1. She likes to read books
2. She hates cold places
3. She is extremely Clumsy to the point that she's, I quote "almost disabled" whatever the fuck that means.
4. Have absolutely no respect or interest to be kind to her friends because they're not 'beautiful & mysterious' like the Cullens and she tends to have quite a negative and pardon by french, bitchy outlook about her normal human friends.
5. So pale that she jokes about being half albino all the time, again, whatever the fuck that means. Like we get it Bella, you're White.
I'm not even going to go over her relationship with Edward because I just don't see anything interesting there. He wants to eat her, he can't read her mind which then makes her special, somehow, inexplicably she smells better than the other human beings to him, none of it makes any sense but whatever.
Let me put a few quotes here that rendered me absolutely speechless because there's nothing sexier than a guy who wants to eat you and subtly threatens to hurt you if you don't walk away:
"Did you ever think that maybe my number was up the first time, with the van, and that you've been interfering with fate" I speculated, distracting myself.
"That wasn't the first time," he said, and his voice was hard to hear. I stared at him in amazement, but he was looking down. "Your number was up the first time I met you."
"To me, it was like you were some kind of demon, summoned straight from my own personal hell to ruin me. The fragrance coming off your skin…I thought it would make me deranged that first day. In that one hour, I thought of a hundred different ways to lure you from the room, to get you alone. And I fought them each back, thinking of my family, what I could do to them. I had to run out, to get away before I could speak the words that would make you follow…"
"I was appalled. I couldn't believe I had put us in danger after all, put myself in your power - you of all people. As if I needed another motive to kill you."
"I could kill you quite easily, Bella, simply by accident."
Et cetera. You get the gist.
Edward having issues about being a vampire, not having a soul, being afraid of hurting / killing Bella but continuously reminding her that he could kill her, and then being extremely protective and abusive is a recurring theme in this series. Aside from all that, he's not even that interesting as a character, and unfortunately not even as a vampire. I don't have issues with him sparkling under the sun, frankly I don't give a shit. What I'm having issues with is the fact that he lives for 90 years and he just... exists. There's nothing interesting going on in his life at all. He collects CDs? Is that fucking it, Edward. What else do you do beside all that and being all sad about being a monster?
You know what, they kinda do deserve each other, actually.
Part of me understands the appeal of this book, especially for myself back when I was 12. I liked the idea that there's a girl who's being presented as this imperfect, unbalanced, and anti-social person but the world around her treats her like she's not any of those things, that she is desired and liked by other people despite all of her unpleasantness and imperfection (as unrealistic as that is). I think as a teenager, I had that kind of immature outlook about the world, like I was living in a teenage rom-com and someday i would find *love like this* as cringey as that sounds.
Anyway, all the negative points aside, I'm glad that I'm doing this reread fest. Yes this book is not good, but I realised that I sort...of... kinda... liked it? The things that I like about it is not so much about the story or the characters themselves, but I like the nostalgia that it brings. I like that it's some sort of a guilty pleasure for me to read it (at least for this first instalment because ooh boy, Eclipse & Breaking Dawn are bad ) and bitch and complain and scathingly talk about it on twitter.
Another part about what makes this whole thing fun for me is that it's a nice distraction from the current issues that are going on in the world. Because you know what? I'd rather read a bad romance book than think about life right now, that's how horrible everything is at the moment. And I really couldn't recommend doing this enough, read those awful books you have a love and hate relationship with & write down angry notes/reviews for it. It's fun.
Going back to the first sentence, you know what's worse than twilight? the fucking pandemic.