Because I know you're all dying to know...

[altarflame]

#1, Twilight - 3 out of 5 stars.

I was really weirded out by just how "young adult" it was, because I've only read VERY "adult" vampire books before. Like, no open mouth kissing, really? Are you serious? I was also dissapointed by an almost total lack of character development and somewhat poor writing. It was an easy read, blah. I was surprised that there was so much hype about it. Also. This author expects an awful lot of suspending our disbelief, like...ok. 100 year old vampires, fine, I can do that. Girl in a small town, yeah, ok. Attraction, trackers, whatever, I am dealing, they drive fast cars and talk on cell phones, that makes sense, but...THEY GO TO HIGH SCHOOL?! REALLY?! Is she SERIOUS?! *headdesk*

And - completely dumb that it ends as though he's changing her into a vampire right there behind the prom, but then that's never even mentioned at the beginning of book 2, we're just supposed to forget about it.

My favorite parts were all that drawn out tension in biology class when they're watching movies and then he just touches her face outside of gym, and the meadow scene, and those were good enough to make me go buy book 2. Plus I read REALLY FAST and I hate getting to the end of things and having to find other things to read, as silly as that probably sounds.

#2, New Moon, 2 stars

This was BY FAR the worst book of the series. I was so irritated throughout it that I was just...I don't even know. I felt like I had to slug through most of it just to be able to continue the story, which seemed as though it would pick up in good ways at some point.

Edward leaving? Mind-numbingly dumb.
All that time she's miserable and depressed and then all that time with Jacob? Tedious to get through and not what I'm in it for.

I really, really, REALLY don't care about the high school gossip with Jessica and Mike and Angela, or the legends of werewolves, or any of that, and I kept wondering as I read...do other people reading these books care about that stuff? I mean I actually skimmed a couple of pages, something I almost never do.

I think my favorite parts of this were...
-the faltering and slow lead-ups to kissing, which made the tension worse and hinted that maybe they'd eventually take it further
-that he stays everynight in her room all night, while she's sleeping (Yes, I can still swoon with the best of them)
-finding out was watching her sleep all along, and listening to her talk in her sleep
-the faint hope we're given that she might actually be a vampire too one day, after the whole voting thing went down with the rest of the family

I couldn't believe the "voice of Edward from her subconscious when she was in danger" was really just...her own subconscious mind. I thought it was very obvious that he was speaking into her head somehow, or whispering/growling at her from hidden places, either way because he was continuing to keep an eye on her while not allowing her to see him. I mean...he gave her detailed instructions she obeyed, with Laurent in the meadow O_o Couldn't the writer have at least explained it away with some vague talk of souls communing over the miles or something? It was really weird to me how so much was made of that and then it was just forgotten...

I realized at the end of this book that part of the reason I usually like dark and gothic fiction is because it's ok to choose the wrong path in a book. It's absorbing and enveloping and NOT damning or illegal to go on and kill the human or have the sex or whatever. I do an awful lot of "struggling not to" (eat crap, lose patience with the kids, buy unnecessary stuff, hold grudges, all kinds of junk all the time, sleep in on Sunday morning) in real life and don't need my freaking vampire books to be more of that constant "upholding the struggle".

#3, Eclipse, 3 stars

Far more engrossing than New Moon was, but also WAY more infuriating.

I honestly couldn't tell, throughout this book, if I was SUPPOSED to be able to tell that Victoria was behind all the murders and, from 3/4 of the way through on, that she was doing it with an army of newborns, or if I was intuitively seeing through a plot designed to keep 14 year olds guessing til the end...I don't mean to be so mean, but really, I'm still not sure.

And I was seriously dissapointed and frustrated by Bella's total horror about marriage. It is SO BEYOND ME to be strongly against marriage, period, but particularly I just can't even relate to the idea of being so in love with someone that you're ready to spend eternity with them, you risk your life to be around them, you BLACKED OUT for days and then were catatonic for months when separated...and yet you're NOT jumping for joy when they propose? WTF is wrong with this chick? Doesn't she know about the torment in the gay community because they aren't allowed to wed?

This thought process led me down this whole other weeklong rant Grant had to listen to about how our society is so messed up that young people see marriage (not promiscuous sex or repeated abortions or spending all of college drunk at frat parties, but MARRIAGE) as taboo. I made a bunch of pronouncements about how if our kids find a giving and mature partner they really love and they want to commit at a young age, I would think that was a hell of a lot better than them ending up where most of my high school friends are...i.e., single, lonely and often depressed, with what honestly seems to me like largely meaningless lives comprised of watching tv, going to jobs they don't particularly like and dating people they don't particularly like. I obviously have a biased opinion here but it's hard for me to imagine forging a deep and lasting connection in your thirties that would be capable of comparing to what happens when people basically GROW UP together...why do we think you have to have the baggage of Xs to be happy with someone in a lasting way? ...Anyway.

So yeah, Bella annoys me a lot with her inability to accept gifts, her horror at being in a gorgeous gown at the prom with someone starry eyed over her, and her disgust with the idea of marrying her soul mate. I mean...shut up.

But, I also relate to her a lot, by this book, in the sense that we both:
-acted way old beyond our years as teenagers, having held together an unstable mother who was then far away while we lived a life distant from any real supervision (I was left with my grandparents for the last three years of high school, who basically let me do what I wanted with my own car and phone line, after being the adult in the house throughout childhood - and my mom also called practically every day)
-are super clumsy and accident prone
-had a lot of guys interested throughout school but still felt very insecure about our looks
-listen to a wide range of music and read a lot of classics
-have long, thick, wild dark hair
-had a total apathy for school functions

And I always liked guys who were either bad, weird, or otherwise long haired, and spent a lot of time alone or doing household chores and cooking for other people, as a teen.

I kept being shocked by the anticlimactic nonsense of Edward going back to high school classes and of Bella continuing to do things like honor being grounded by her father...she just got back from flying to Italy, where she faced down the Volturi, and she's GROUNDED, now? He dissapeared for months of torment, nearly killed himself, and now he's just sitting beside her in biology and waiting for lunch in the cafeteria pretending to eat off his tray again? It's worse than Harry spending summers with the Dursleys, and FAR less practical. Would a hundred year old vampire so in love and knowing the seconds are ticking by for his mortal woman really sit around pretending to watch basketball games with the dad and then sneaking in the bedroom window after he's gone off to bed? She's 18, here, people, at which age I HAD MY OWN KID, car and apartment. Perhaps that's part of my bafflement. But, really.

Onlyabook, onlyabook, onlyabook...

I did not understand why she was continuing to go be with Jacob.

She's hurting him terribly out of selfishness, when she should just cut him loose.
She sees werewolves lose their tempers, him almost lose his temper, Sam's wife with her face mauled, and Edward's ANGUISH over her going out there, but continues to, just to...sit squished on the couch while he snores? Hang out on a log while he tells more boring stories? That he kissed her was SO NOT OK.

That she forgives him after he forces himself on her like that, and that her dad acts like Jacob was not in the wrong, was downright disturbing to me.

But that she kissed him back later before the big fight was a million times worse.

And then that confusion, that "did she really did love him" bs? It was ruining everything for me, undermining all the profound and strong junk she was so sure of with Edward. This is supposed to be a love story and I have too much personal history with fucked up love triangles centered around an immature girl who can't bear to not have TWO guys all into her. At some point you have to grow up...

I was like, no, uh-uh, I see where this is going Mormon moral young adult pseudo vampire story, and I seriously REFUSED to read the fourth one until I searched the web for enough spoilers that I could be absolutely certain she did NOT end up married to Jacob and happy while Edward went on with his solitary life, no longer threatening her. I was just not even going to be a part of that and it really seemed like it might be where the story was headed.

At least book 3 was a page turner and made me feel invested in the story, even if it did make me nuts, unlike book 2, which was often...boring.

#4, Breaking Dawn, 5 stars

I loved this book.

Really. I know from the spoilers I sought out before I risked reading it that a lot of people thought Bella was a "Mary Sue", no conflict character, and that the author did a million things wrong, and people hate a lack of angst...but I don't care.

The whole wedding thing had me giddy. THEY ACTUALLY GOT MARRIED. And she liked it! And it was awesome!

The honeymoon was so awesome. THEY ACTUALLY HAD SEX. And they skimmed the sex part, but the leadup was so right on and eating pillows and breaking the headboard are hilarious.

I loved getting like a good hundred pages of bliss in before any bullshit started. I could just read that for days.

And then she was PREGNANT? And had a baby? I love having sex and getting pregnant and making babies ;) No but really...I loved it.

The stuff from Jake's perspective was not too bad. I groaned when it switched perspectives, but then it was entertaining and easy to read.

The impromptu c-section featuring blood splatters, vomiting blood, near death, fangs in the womb and a baby wisked away, while Bella lays there with her spine getting snapped...that was really, really hard for me to read. I mean I actually had to stop reading 3 times and breathe. And take a longer break after the scene. It was just way too much like some of my worst twisted, caricature nightmares :x Ugh. I think I'm blocking parts of it out, actually, crazy as that sounds. And it really came out of left field, after such tame G rated sort of stuff.

But I loved her being a devoted mother, I ADORED the cottage in the woods, and, what? She DID end up being a vampire! All described so well, I loved the transition writing when she was waking up from the "burning".

Renesmee Carlie is a stupid name. Nessie is worse. Only getting one baby who is grown in 6 years, who is imprinted on from birth, who never nurses and is completely separate from you at night, is all pretty lame. But, you know, I have met a baby 3 days after birth, too, and sat there in the interim with my hand on my empty belly wondering how there could really be a person on the outside I haven't met. I liked the baby's talent.

I liked Bella's talent, and how she kind of found herself and quit being awkward.

I do not care how foolish people seem to think Happily Ever Afters are, I am all about them and was all filled up inside by this one.

So in conclusion...

Twilight Saga as a whole

I would reccomend it, with the reservation that people had better be willing to overlook some details and put up with some, how should I put it, horseshit, because it is all worth it in the end, at least from my perspective.

There were a lot of things I heard other people did not like about this book, like it's Christian and/or moral slants, that I DID end up really enjoying by the end - I also believe, though, that people have souls and that you should wait until after marriage to have sex - which I see as a joining of souls - and that there is a grand plan, and that love can conquer all and all that sort of hackneyed and old fashioned claptrap, including "motherhood is amazing and part of my purpose in life".

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Sidenote: I was at the bookstore talking with the owner lady, who I normally relate to at least somewhat. She is 20 years older than me and Mormon, but we're both homeschooling moms of 5 and she used to be a LLL leader. We both obviously love books and local business and all that. We got to talking about Twilight because, well, she noticed my eyes were swollen and bloodshot from reading ALL FOUR BOOKS in like 5 days that were practically sleepless :x

And I just sat there feeling so...weird. Because she was saying things like, "It really bothered me that she lied to her parents" and, "I just thought it was wrong for the author to have a boy sneaking in her bedroom at night, it sends the wrong message". There were many such statements, but what they all added up to was, "I read fantasy love stories from the perspective of the parental figure being shirked in the background". I am still coming at this as someone who cannot sleep at night, who used to call Grant in the middle of the night whenever I woke up from nightmares and he would tell me stories until I fell back asleep on the line, waking in the morning for school with the phone crammed under me somewhere uncomfortable. To me the idea of a guardian type lover-without-the-sex kissing and watching a girl sleep is incredible. Who in the hell would read that and think, yeah, but what about poor Charlie sleeping down the hall who has no idea his daughter's shacking up right in his own house? I mean, geez.

Will I see books this way when I have teenagers? *shudders*

Anyway, my baby is crying, so this is it for now.