Vampires

Warning, Twilight victims: spoilers ahead.

Happy Holidays, fellow readers of smart books. While there are plenty of wonderful happy memories for me to report from our Christmastime spent in Indiana, prior to posting about that I must unleash my haphazard albeit sincerely confused review of Twilight. I will feel better about everything knowing I've not only exhausted my eyes with this YA #1 New York Times Bestseller (wth???), but that I've also recognized the...value...in this book, for what it's worth.*For months, I've complained to Craig. Why is everyone (young teen girls, their mothers, girls my age, gentlemen, perhaps?) obsessed with something so trite as a story about girl meets boy, boy happens to be Most Handsome and Incidentally Eligible Vampire, Ever, in One Hundred Years? (note: Edward is 100, yet, he's 17 forever. Ah, fantasyland). Craig has been frustrated with my verbal reviews of a book I had not yet read. Alas, I launched myself into the Twilight challenge. Where to begin? Poor, poor author - she must be miserable. She wrote this, as Craig's girl cousins told me, at soccer practice from the bleachers watching her children? Then, after rejection ontop of rejection (wait - maybe she didn't even receive rejection letters?? I could have my backstory incorrect) she received a deal to write not just the one excruciating book filled cover to cover with YA cliches, but four of them? And then, a movie deal? Wait, probably four movie deals? Poor author must be miserable swimming in all the vampire glory and money, so I won't feel guilty slashing (biting?) this book to bits. But before I go on, I must also admit to having bought New Moon, the second installment. As if that doesn't speak worlds.*Plot summary: angst-ridden teen girl, who is a self-proclaimed (as written from first person p.o.v.) knockout, bails on free spirit mother and mother's Minor League signed boyfriend, leaving sunny, righteous Phoenix to punish said angst-ridden self by bunking with often-absent Forks, Washington resident bio dad/Chief of police in Forks. Said absent bio dad provides knockout teen daughter with ancient (foreshadowing of her to-be ancient bf??), yet super cool truck, free of charge. Daughter starts school and of course, everyone just loves her. And wait, why wouldn't her name be Bella (short for Isabella, but she prefers Bella, which she repeatedly and grumpily corrects through the first third of the book). All of the handsome teen boys admire her, but the table of pale-skinned (not yet known to be vampires) teens in the corner of the cafeteria are what catches Bella's eye. Let's just skip the boring stuff. Bella and the handsomest vampire ever sit next to one another in Biology. He clenches his fists in apparent rage and has black eyes, which mystifies her. He disappears for a few days. He reappears, this time with ochre eyes. Insert: I wonder if the author can trademark the color ochre, given the number of times she uses it to describe Edward's eyes? Bella investigates/attempts to seduce young/old Edward. Before you know it, they are happy (but sad, and mad) and in love. What do you know? She exudes the most alluring scent he's ever sniffed in a century. Props to you, Bella, for your floral shampoo or whatever it is you naturally convey to arise something in Edward that he hasn't felt in 100 years. 100 years as a teen boy and he's never been attracted to a woman as strongly as he is to Bella? That can only wreak of one thing and one thing alone: true love. Sigh, don't all of us women wish we could find the perfect, can-do-no-wrong, will-protect-us-from-all-harm vampire man to love and to love us. Thank goodness they go to prom at the end, after a perilous scene where a vampire bite from a tracker named James almost makes her a vampire, too, and of course our hero Edward sucks out the venom to keep her human, because I was beginning to think this book wasn't going to contain anything realistic! Vampires at prom. Insert scoff.*Last on my list of complaints (certainly not last, but a serious, quite serious complaint) is that I've never in my existence as a YA reader (and I read just about every YA book I could get my hands/eyes on when I was younger) held a book in my hands containing as many glares, smirks, snickers and lowered eyes as this one. By the third chapter or so, I wondered if the author was mocking me, reader. In a vampire world, my eyes may have begun to bleed from the string of glares, smirks, snickers and lowered eyes. I had to repeat them for emphasis. Luckily, installment two hasn't yet let me down - we still get the feeling Bella and Edward get some sort of sadistic pleasure out of glaring at one another.*So what did I like, and why did I read nearly 500 pages of glaring in less than 4 days, and why do I continue forward in the series? Well, the author did inject some provocative scenes (without being outright naughty) (snicker) which had me squirming. How hot would it be to have the most attractive vampire in 100 years fall in love with and want to suck the living blood from you, yet refrain because of the overwhelming love he feels? What human man ever denies basic animal instinct merely because his love is that strong?...(smirk) In addition, as a reader, as readers, a common denominator when reading is to become attached to main characters, regardless of how trite they might be. Yes, I'm rooting for Edward and Bella and their love. I'd be inhumane to not. But what is the bottom line here, and how did the author drag me into this miserable storyline of hers? Because I must know: Will Edward Let Bella Become a Vampire So They May Love Immortally...and while the Internet bares all, and I could easily find the spoiler without wasting my reading abilities on 2,000 pages of punishment, that isn't the path I'm choosing to take.*Ridiculous as it may be, the tattoo I saw on a girl's arm on the subway once recently is now ringing true as I read this series: Love is Pain.*Craig would say that I'm jealous of this author because she managed to find an agent and become published and popular. I will forever argue that if my name were tagged to something so painfully ridden with glaringly (sorry) pathetic narrative weaving, I'd want to run and hide. Although, admittedly, the money would be a welcome reward, I suppose.*To come, happy holidays with family and friends...