Yuku free message boards

In a way I feel like the only teenage girl who really disliked this book and isn't head-over-heels for Edward Cullen and his God-like perfection. While I am perfectly aware that this is a YA novel and should be treated as such, even YA deserves some good ol' criticism sometimes. After all, nobody feels bad about ripping apart the Harry Potter books in a review, and they are aimed at an even younger audience.

Twilight could very well be the epitome of Mary Sue fiction. It read like something you would find on a fanfiction website and is clear from the very first chapter.

Bella Swan, the main character, moves to Forks, Washington, a city that seems to constantly be under siege by rain. She, of course, does not want to be here. She's not fond of her father; she misses her mother, but decides to make a great sacrifice by moving so her mother can travel with her baseball-playing boyfriend while Bella finishes school. From there the author blesses us with lines like: "Now my horrific day tomorrow would be just that much less dreadful.", and "It wasn't just physically that I'd never fit in. And if I couldn't find a niche in a school with three thousand people, what were my chances here?". If you haven't already guessed, Bella's life is terrible because she's shy. However, when she steps foot inside the school, despite her being oh-so depressed, cynical and stricken with a social phobia, she has already made a horde a friends and has boys on her tail, even if she isn't physically appealing. Still in the first chapter, she spots a family of flawless, gorgeous human beings. Here we meet the Cullen family- Edward Cullen in particular. Naturally, she is enchanted by them. Poor Bella finds that, by the power of cliché coincidence, she sits next to said Cullen in Biology. This is where the magic begins.

To make a long story short, her life is saved by Edward, she finds out he is a vampire and boom! They're in love. Madly, deeply in love. No suspense and no build-up at all. It just happens. All within the first few chapters. The rest of the book? Lots of smiling, glaring and explanations about Edward's gorgeous eyes, hair, smell and affection. Every time we see him, Bella comments on how his clothes bring out the muscular shape of his body and about his "beautiful crooked smile". Only within the last pages of the book do you get an exciting (which is up to interpretation) story that includes an antagonist. The first 400-some pages were as bland as bland can be.

The real fun is with the characters. They have no depth. They're almost laughable.

- Bella is beautiful but doesn't believe that she is, despite the fact that she has a vampire and the entire male population of her school drooling over her. Meyer tried to make her a strong heroine, but didn't quite make it. While she may write reports about misogyny in Shakespearean works, she also cooks and cleans for her lazy father who expects nothing less from her and follows Edward's every word religiously with no second thoughts.
- Edward is a brooding, angsty vampire with no flaws, perfect hair, beautiful eyes and a body to die for. Enough said.
- Edward's family members are cheerful (except for Rosalie. I think she was the only character I liked, because she was snarky and real) and, once again, flawless.

I finished the book and came online to see what other people had to say about it only to find that it had a rather large fanbase and tons of perfect reviews. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. Different strokes for different folks as they say. I'm just a bit surprised that it is popular in some of the communities it is popular in- fanfiction writers who scoff at the idea of Mary Sue characters, for example, as if Bella and Edward can be excluded from this.

On the positive side, Stephanie Meyer has an interesting perspective on vampires: the fact that they can't sleep and some of the special abilities she gave them that not all vampires have and so on. Then again, she also made them glittery in the sunlight.

I've heard there are a lot of grammatical and spelling mistakes in Twilight, but I did not notice them so I can't comment on it. I have poor grammar myself, so it is not as noticeable to me as it is to some people. *shrug*