Paperspine Blog

I hadn’t planned on reading this book. Unlike approximately half of the book-blogosphere and nearly all of the blogs that talk about YA books on any sort of a regular basis, I hadn’t even heard of this book until a couple of months ago.

Here’s why I WASN’T going to read the book:

• I suddenly saw the book in several blogs and was afraid of the hype. Scornful of it, actually. I’m a belligerent reader.
• I’ve pretty much stopped reading vampire books because it was hard to find good ones. And I wasn’t willing to read through all of the dreck to find the good stuff.
• I’d heard that it was a teenage vampire love story. Those are even less likely to be good than your everyday run of the mill vampire book.

Here’s why I decided to read the book after all:

• I was looking for a newer YA book to read. Sometimes, I tend to get stuck in my old favorites, so I thought I’d expand my horizons a bit.
• I figured that if the book sucked, I’d at least have something to say to all of the people who were professing their love for the book. I could say at least say that I hated the book rather than not be able to say anything about it.
• This last reason was the biggest reason of all: my youngest sister, who is 15 and doesn’t “do” reading books for fun, loved the book so much that she read the whole thing. And is still talking about it months later. In fact, when she went to Forks (this is where the book is set – we live in Seattle, so Forks is only a couple of hours away), she made it a point to see all of the “major” spots in the book. (… or so she says. I don’t know. I wasn’t there.) I thought that, if nothing else, I’d at least have a book to talk to her about. (She now says “I only read vampire books.” That’s better than not reading at all, even if I do wish she would read other things as well.)

One of the things that surprised me when I opened the mailer containing the book was the length of the book. I was expecting it to be a shorter book than it was – quite a bit shorter, actually. I was expecting a book that was 250 pages or less. What I got was a book that was almost 500 pages long. (Aside: In my head, it went something more like this “Wait. My sister read a five hundred page book? This I’ve got to see!!” – Just to clarify, it isn’t that she CAN’T read, it’s that she chooses not to do so very often.)

I read pretty quickly, so much so that my friends say that I absorb books rather than read them. Still, I thought it might take a few days to read. I opened the mailer yesterday and finished the book this morning somewhere around 7 am. I was at work (I read when I’m “on hold” – it makes the time pass more quickly) and I remember thinking “What!? It’s over already?” I mention this because it is a quick read, even though it is a rather thick book. I guess that means I didn’t hate it after all. Quite the opposite, actually.

The two main characters seemed so realistic. Bella seems like a pretty normal teenage girl – maybe somebody I knew in high school. Edward, too, seems like a normal high school kid – if you discount the whole “being a vampire” bit. I thought all of the characters were well done, but these two especially so. And they have a bit of the awkward teenage love thing going on.

At times, I forgot that Edward was a vampire. He doesn’t feed on humans and, in fact, he interacts with them on a daily basis (he and four other teenage vampires in his “family” go to high school). This is a big part of the reason that you can forget he’s a vampire. But, from time to time, something happens that makes you remember – he can read (most) minds, he is extremely fast, and, of course, sometimes has to work really hard to pull himself together around blood. It’s the little reminders that keep an undercurrent of uneasiness going at most times.

I like some of the liberties that the author took with what a vampire is. There’s one scene where Edward shows Bella what he looks like in the sun. I won’t spoil it, but it was definitely interesting.

Most of the book sets up the relationship between Bella and Edward. As the book moves farther on, you begin to realize that a relationship like this could be quite difficult – for them both. And Bella seems to be bothered by that in different was than Edward. While Edward is concerned and afraid that he’ll accidentally hurt Bella (she smells yummy and tempting – at times, he can barely keep himself away from her throat), Bella grows more concerned about what will happen as time goes on. Bella will get older while Edward will not. And she doesn’t like it. She thinks about becoming a vampire so she… wait. No. I can’t tell you that. Let’s just say that the last part of the book will keep you in suspense the whole time.

This book is a page-turner. If you’ve not read it yet… you should, whether you’re a young adult or not.

Links to other reviews of this book:
Passion for the Page
Reading Adventures
A Striped Armchair
In Spring it is the Dawn
This Book Is For You