• TWILIGHT
• by Stephanie Meyer
• [rated by PBS readers as #73]
• 498 pages

This book is nothing but a 498 seduction.

Sign me up.

As I write, I am over 300 pages in and though I don’t read particularly fast, I might be done tonight!

In the interest of fair disclosure, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a fan of vampire stuff. Never attracted me in the slightest. So once again, this ten year trek has offered me up something that I’m loving that I would most assuredly never have read.

There are all kinds of seductions here. Meyer is so uniquely skilled at telling this tale, that while he is seducing her – she is seducing you!

From the first pages of this book, when the lead character goes to a new high school (I am going to stay purposely vague in details with this one, because if you are attracted to reading it, you deserve it to be fresh and new), I was IN high school. Now, high school is so far in my rear view mirror that I would absolutely fail if you gave me a quiz for details. So feeling like I was truly back in high school was delightful and first rate storytelling.

When I would feel a little reading thrill, I would go back to see if I could see how she did it – a little detail here, a little one there – but I absolutely didn’t see it. More than once, I looked deeply into the hat and couldn’t spot the rabbit!

The story unfolds just as seamlessly – like a flower blooming in sped up photography.

Oh, and lest I forget, Meyer uses the vampire thing to the greatest effect I have ever experienced. It becomes the ultimate plot point in the seduction.

The main two characters are exquisitely unique, believable, heartbreaking, two literary characters I know I will never forget. Talk about rooting for them? Off the charts. Will check in when I’m finished.

FINISHED.

WOW! I just finished Twilight and I’m so happy and grateful. I just finished an utterly fantastic read. That, as an avid reader, is pretty much the best thing you can hope for out of life! And I just had that, with a book I would NEVER have read without this blog.

I realize I have a habit of speculating on whether I will pick up more of any of the series I read here. I would probably read them after I finish the list….

Let me put that to rest. I’m ordering the next Twilight from Amazon as soon as I finish writing this! And I may not read it for a while, but the point is – I’m dug in deep. I want to live with an outlet to this world and these amazing characters Meyer has written.

No convert to any other vampirism either, it is this story alone that has me bonded to it. I will admit that the last third of the story suddenly speeds up in a massively manipulative way that doesn’t do justice to the pacing and intimacy of the first two thirds, but you know? I don’t care. In for a penny, in for a pound.

What a blazing, fun read! Great, great, great.

ONE DAY LATER…

Where is my next installment of Twilight? Gimme, gimme, gimme! I ordered it last night and it isn’t coming for two

more whole days!

You see what I’m saying here. Seriously hooked. I may not read it for ten years, but it’s killing me that I don’t have it here to be able to make that choice! Hm. I find that last sentence to be vaguely vampiric… Uh oh.