Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

New situations are always intriguing and scary at the same time. When Bella moves to her father's house in Washington, she is expecting to have to make new friends, go to a new high school, learn to live in the rain, and to learn to live with her father. She is not expecting to fall in love with a vampire. When Bella meets Edward, she is fascinated by his beauty, his intelligence, and his strangeness. It doesn't hurt that he saves her life. At first she thinks he must be a superhero, but she soon learns differently and has to decide whether she is willing to risk her life to love a vampire.

The characters in this book are incredible. Not only can you empathize with their perspectives, learn about them, but it is as if you are a part of their life. Bella is both a typical high school girl and completely atypical at the same time. It is this atypical teenager that draws Edward and this novel's readers into her story. Edward is scary, strange, heroic, intense, and lovable all at the same time. Bella thought that he "would disappear, like a mirage, too beautiful to be real..." (261). There are few authors whose characters have this much depth and roundness in young adult literature and that is what really drew me into this novel. I couldn't put it down and had to know what was going to happen to these two incredible characters.

The plot of this book was also incredible. Not only does it build a love story that is intense, unique, and romantic, but the love story actually seems real. This is not the typical love at first sight story, but is instead about love that involves hard choices, working together to make it work, and differences that seem irreconcilable. Bella says early on in the story, "The decision was ridiculously easy to live with. Dangerously easy" (140).

Not only is this a love story, but it is also an adventure. No good vampire novel would be right without the possibility of a vampire attack and it is this high speed adventure that ends the novel. If you're worried that this is only a sappy love story, then you are wrong. There is fighting, blood thirst, and of course the possibility of immortal death.

The only frustrating part of this book is the end, which will leave you hanging. I can only hope that there will be a sequel and that it will be a riveting as this first novel was. I highly recommend this book and hope that you find it as completely enthralling as I did.

Written and published by Mrs. Foster