Book Review: Twilight

By Amy Orringer
October 18, 2009

Our Review

Though fantasy stories and fairy tales continue to enjoy their hold on the younger set, thanks to a certain wizard-based series, the world of young adult and tween fantasy is experiencing its own coming-of-age. The stories are less about plunging readers completely into another world, and more about that other world being tossed into readers’ lives, the already complex mess of adolescence.

 

Twilight, The Twilight Saga, Book 1 (Little, Brown Young Readers, 2006) by Stephenie Meyer

This is one of the few young adult novels we can recommend for both grandmothers and granddaughters. Twilight, the Twilight Saga, Book 1 is the first in yet another brilliant series that’s well-written enough to suck in (excuse the pun) even the most cynical adult reader. Readers can immediately identify with the main character, 17 year-old Bella; she’s a completely regular, kind-of-clumsy, independent girl — the kind we root for because secretly (or for some tweens, maybe not so secretly), we’re a little like that too.

So the plot gets even more enthralling when we discover that Bella just happens to be cosmically connected to a handsome, dangerous, incredibly kind vampire. Sure, there are lots of books about love against all odds, but this one manages to conjure up that belief in true, immortal that love we develop as young girls and never really let go of, no matter how long ago we traded it for practicality.

Young readers find themselves wanting to believe that even amid midterms and homecoming and the whole vampires-eat-humans problem, they’ll somehow make it through; older readers will simply feel like young readers again. The entire series has been flying off the shelves for months, and the first book will be released as a movie, starring Kristin Stewart and Robert Pattinson, later this fall.

Price: $6
For ages: 14 and older
Available at: Amazon.com

Source Grandparents