Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1) Review

I literally just finished this book and I'm just waiting for rush hour traffic to calm down so I can go to the book store and buy the next book in the series. I need it now!

I heard about Twilight by Stephenie Meyer about 2 weeks ago when I got an email from Borders with an article about the "Bella Luna" series being the next Harry Potter.  As I'm a huge Harry Potter fan and practically having DTs as a result of the series being finished, I was chomping at the bit for a similar story into which I could throw my attention.  And Twilight delivered.

Twilight is the story of Bella Swan, a Phoenix teenager who leaves home to live with her father in a small town in Washington state.  Bella finds herself interested in Edward Cullen who is an odd boy in one of her classes who turns out to be a vampire.  She feels safe with him and they fall in love.  He and his family prefer to feed off of animals rather than people, but the underlying blood lust is always there bubbling under the surface.  So it's definitely not your typical romance story as that risk exists, as well as the risk that their romantic involvement will expose the Cullens as vampires and expose Bella's family to any harm that might befall those who befriend the undead. 

Twilight is a young adult book and is very clean.  There is no swearing and no sex whatsoever but it is about vampires, blood desire, and topics more appropriate for older kids so I'd say this one is for the over 16 crowd.  It's no Harry Potter but it is quite good and I could barely put it down.  Last night I read until 1am as I just couldn't go to bed without knowing what would happen to Bella.

Twilight was well-written and kept my attention throughout as I was anxious to see what would happen but some parts were a bit slow.  Somewhere between pages 250 and 350 it started to get a little long in the tooth and I was wondering where the story was going.  But when I got around page 375 it took off like crazy and I was furiously turning pages to see what would happen next.

Twilight is Stephanie Meyer's first book.  There are two other books in the series (New Moon and Eclipse).  The 4th book, The Host, will be released in May 2008.