I’ve made a book review for my cousin. She’s incredibly busy so I gave her a hand in one of her tasks. I’m no critic but a girl’s got to do what she gotta do. Feel free to comment, criticize or something. It’s my first time to write a serious book review so anything helps.
Also, it’s long. There is a 3000 words minimum so excuse the eventual boredom it will cause.
TWILIGHT
STEPHENIE MEYER
(draft2)
There are only two types of books. The first one is a book where you feel good vibes with. A book that you couldn’t put down the moment you first read the first few chapters; the one that you could not get enough of. The other type of book is the exact opposite; a book that you couldn’t even bare to get past the first chapter. A book that’s so uninteresting that it would take you months or years to finish even if you’re a bookworm. Twilight, for me, is the former.
It’s the kind of book that the moment you read the first few chapters, you can’t help but fall in love with the characters, the forks and anything related to twilight! The moment I read it, I just can picture myself in the same place as the characters with the vivid descriptions of the place.
Twilight is the first book in the Twilight saga by Stephanie Meyer. It’s about an ordinary human girl who had recently left Phoenix to live with her father in Forks, Washington. This human girl, the heroine in the book, is not the normal almost-perfect heroine. That’s a good thing since reading about a perfect character is quite irritating. Stephenie Meyer describes Isabella Swan as, “a very fair-skinned, with long, straight, dark brown hair and chocolate brown eyes. Her face is heart-shaped—a wide forehead with a widow’s peak, large, wide-spaced eyes, prominent cheekbones, a thin nose and a narrow jaw with a pointed chin. Her lips are a little out of proportion, a bit too full for her jaw line. Her eyebrows are darker than her hair and more straight than they are arched. She’s slender but not at all muscular, and weighs about 115 pounds. She has stubby fingernails because she has a nervous habit of biting them.”
She is also extremely accident prone as if she is a magnet for accidents like the car accident with Tyler Crowley in Forks High School, and she’s also clumsy. She can’t walk properly and has two left feet. She hates gym and gym class hates her too!
In a nutshell, Bella is a pale, average-looking, and clumsy girl. She is ‘An imperfect character perfect for the novel’, that’s how I see Isabella Swan or Bella Swan as. What I like about her the most is her sarcastic side, be it said or thought if. Her sarcasm made Bella a more convincing heroine. Plus it added humor in the story!
In Forks, she met the Cullen Family whom she was very much intrigued with. ‘They were all different but at the same time, very much alike’. They were different in terms of features and looks but they all have the same chalky skin; dark eyes despite the color of their hair; they also have purplish, bruise like shadows under their eyes; and all of them have perfect features. The kind of people everybody would stare and gawk at. The kind of people that people would be envious of because they are inhumanly beautiful… and really, they are inhuman.
They were vampires, good vampires; the vegetarian type, as they call it. The kind of vampires who abstain from drinking human blood; Instead, they hunt animals in forests and drink their blood. It was the way of life their maker and father-figure Carlisle is living. In forks, there are seven vampires whom are all part of Carlisle’s coven. The father figure is Carlisle Cullen, he is also the oldest vampire in the coven; Esme Cullen, Carlisle’s mate and the mother figure on the family; Edward Cullen, the first companion of Carlisle and the mind reader; Alice Cullen, the one who can see the future; Emmett Cullen, the strongest looking vampire of all the lot; Rosalie Hale, a beautiful vampire and Emmett’s mate; and lastly, Jasper Hale who is Alice’s mate and the newest of them all to try living their way of life.
Bella Swan is very intrigued with their inhumanly beautiful faces, and their weird, anti-social behavior. She was also very much afraid of Edward Cullen whom is in most of her classes as Edward seems to dislike her. In their first meeting, Bella felt like Edward Cullen would want to be anywhere but near her. Thus, she concluded that Edward Cullen hates her.
However, that is not exactly what is going on Edward mind.
La Tua Cantante is an Italian phrase which means “your singer”. In the vampire lingo, they use the term ‘La Tua Cantante’ to people whose blood sings them, meaning these people’s blood smells better than any other human. This is Edward dilemma when he met Bella Swan. Not only that Bella smells better and that her blood sings to him; he can’t also read her mind. This made him uneasy, anxious and even desperate to hear her thoughts. He struggled to be her seatmate, smelling her scent and not hearing her thoughts. He was also rather intrigued by this human girl and her attitude and was soon attracted to her.
One of my favorite quotes in the twilight saga says, “And so the lion fell in love with the lamb.” And he did. Edward Cullen fell in love with Bella Swan. And for him, this is a bad thing. Why? One reason: He is a vampire.
But whatever the odds and the danger that pose in their being together, they faced it and enjoyed a different, one-of-a-kind love story.
Edward Cullen is a perfect boyfriend; at least, a perfect fictional boyfriend. He is beautiful. But as the humble vampire that he is, he says that it is just normal to be beautiful as to attract their prey. He is very protective over Bella and puts her safety and humanity before anything else. He often over-analyzes situations and has a tendency to overreact, especially in situations where Bella’s safety is at risk. He is also very romantic having retained most of the early 20th century speech to the present times which can make girls and women cringe with the dreamy speech from an impossibly beautiful guy. But what has captivated us about Edward is his overall being. Edward Cullen’s personality, his charm, his politeness, his determination, his warmth, his tenderness, and his devotion and love for Bella Swan had captivated me and readers of Twilight novel worldwide. And with each turn of the page and with the new chapters of the book, Stephenie Meyer had this knack for drawing the readers more and more to the story of Edward Cullen and Bella Swan’s love in the town of Forks until the readers can’t stop but be obsessed with the Twilight, it’s characters, the vampires, and the story itself.
Edward Cullen was turned into a vampire by his adoptive father, Carlisle Cullen. He, like the rest of his family, adhere to the vampire way of living that Carlisle had started which is to stop drinking human blood. He is a vampire, a mind reader, and someone who had lost his soul, at least that’s what he thought. Edward is the quintessential romantic. He sweeps women off their feet with his gentleness and mysteriousness as what most of the women population in Forks seemed to think, dazzling them with his presence. And this does not exclude Bella Swan, who is, as Edward says, ‘is intoxicated by his mere presence.’
Basically, the Twilight Saga is a love story about Edward Cullen and Bella Swan. It is told in Bella Swan’s point of view so the readers have a glimpse of what Bella is thinking and what she knows.
Twilight is a vampire story but it is also a love story. The romance between the vampire and the human is both touching and compelling. There is a melancholic feel to their impossible love, yet at the same time they are both unwilling to think that their impossible love is hopeless. There is an excitement on how Bella and Edward would withstand all the obstacles that came with their love and it’s interesting to note how they beat these odds… at least temporarily. A love story that seeps into the soul, Twilight made readers all over the world in love with Twilight.
Many have described Twilight as “A vampire story for people who don’t like vampire stories.” I have to agree but I have to add that it is also a book for those who don’t even read books. I have friends and colleagues who are not exactly fond of reading but when they read the first chapter of the book, they could not resist asking ‘what would happen next?’ and they would be so intrigued, they would read the whole book.
Twilight is a good book recommended for all ages however it is far from perfect. Edward is too perfect for my taste but I think being a vampire and living for years could really make one perfect. Edward is not in every sense perfect, though. He fell in love with a human which he is not supposed to do. Or rather, he doesn’t want to. It would be too complicated for him, for his family and for Bella.
I personally enjoyed the Twilight Saga. Stephenie Meyer created a world that is hard to leave. It’s a truly imaginative book and the author introduced ideas about vampires that one could not even imagine a vampire trait! It was written with vivid descriptions that one could feel that he/she is also part of the Twilight world and is living with Bella and the Cullens at Forks!
The book is quite long though. As it was written in Bella’s perspective, the book is more on Bella’s day-to-day teenage life in school and at home. It was repetitive and vampire story lovers out there would want more action and fight scenes but that wouldn’t come until later when Carlisle’s family was playing baseball in a field with Bella. There was another family of nomads composed of James, Victoria, Laurent. Since Edward can read minds, he knows for sure that James was after Bella Swan who also smelled good for James who also doesn’t know why a coven of vampires is protecting the human girl. James is, after all, a hunter who likes the chase and the thrill of tracking a prey and succeeding in drinking their blood. The chase and hunting of Bella is the only action packed scene in the book that I could think of and it would probably disappoint readers who are expecting of more action packed story.
However, Twilight is first and foremost a love story and not an action story. It is a story about first and eternal love. Both Bella and Edward had no romantic experiences from the past and are discovering their love for each other each day. They have no experiences on whatever intimate relationships and they both shared each others first kisses. Readers who are expecting of more intimate love scenes would be disappointed as well. Their love for each other is stronger than any intimate relationship there is and they are quite contented with each other.
The repetitiveness of Bella’s life could somehow bore an average reader however, a story of love that could withstand the odds of racial boundaries of humans and the undead; it would forever mark on the hearts of readers who have read it. It is a story about a forbidden love. Frankly, who doesn’t love a story about forbidden love? People secretly love forbidden love stories. Why? Because honestly, a love story that is almost perfect can be boring to write about. On the contrary, forbidden love stories are read widely and are interesting to read. Why? Because people wanted to know what would happen to their love story. What would happen along the way? What would happen in the course of their relationship? What is their effect on the people around them? And how would they withstand all of the odds in their relationship? Readers would flip those pages of the book thirsting for answers until they became so engrossed with the book that they didn’t know that they’re becoming obsessed with the characters and the story itself. A twist of some sort is needed for a love story to be interesting. Twilight is a love story with an interesting twist. That is, it is a forbidden love between a vampire and human.
Twilight maybe an entertaining and good book with a good plot and characters that people could easily fall in love with it is far from perfect. It is not exactly written in the best manner. It could have an award for imagination but the writing style is not always astonishing throughout the book. Something could also be said about the way Edward Cullen’s character is so dreamy and perfect.
In the lighter note, Twilight could also be said to be moral. At least in the first book where there are no sex scenes and there is even minimal kissing between the lovers, and you can truly fall in love with the characters as all the characters are easy to fall in love with. There is no feeling of having to read a vampire novel. The reader knows that it is a vampire story but it’s the least of their worries. They worry more on about what would happen to Bella and Edward? And what would they do to set their differences? And this time, the differences are not on their personalities like the normal adult fictions but on their racial background that is genuinely rare and interesting.
