Twilight

Well, I finally broke down and read Twilight. I had never planned to read it, but my 11-year-old daughter checked it out at the library and since it has the reputation of being a romance novel for teens, I thought I'd better read it before she does, just to be sure it's appropriate for her.

Except for Harry Potter, I generally don't jump on the bestseller bandwagon, worshipping the latest popular fiction like a fanatic. And Twilight seems to have developed a following of Star-Trek-convention-like proportion.

So, I had scoffed at the Twilight series as plebeian fluff. I don't read romance novels in general, so the thought of a teenage romance seemed pretty vapid to me.

But, since my daughter wanted to read it, I dove in.

Now, for those of you who haven't read the book yet and plan on reading it, I'm going to be discussing some general content and plot points so if you don't want me to ruin the story for you, stop reading here!

I have to admit that overall, I actually enjoyed the book.

Of course the first half was kind of tedious. Nothing really happened to further the plot and, in fact, I was beginning to wonder if there was ever going to be a plot at all. It was full of adolescent angst and way too much of Bella's "I love him soooooo much, and I want him to love me sooooo much." Okay, I get it already. She's in love. And I swear, if I had to read another description of how perfectly gorgeous Edward was I was going to puke. Yes, he's cold as stone, he's chiseled like marble, and he's got Adonis-like beauty. He's got smoldering eyes and he's ultra-sexy. He's good at everything he does. Got it. Moving on, please.

But, once Bella figured out Edward's a vampire, and we finally got past all the mooning and swooning, there was actually some plot that was moderately amusing and entertaining! Nobody was more surprised than I was because I was prepared not to like the book.

In fact, it was good enough that I'm ready to read the next book in the series and hope we can get to the plot a lot more quickly.

Even though it turns out that I enjoyed the book, I was a little skeptical about letting my daughter read it. Even though Bella and Edward really only kiss a few times in the book, the story is full of desire and sexual tension, and I thought it was even slightly erotic in places, at least for an 11-year-old. I don't know, maybe I'm just overprotective. She knows about the mechanics of sex, but as we all know it's a lot more complicated than just the mechanics. She isn't interested in boys or dating or anything like that yet and I'm not sure how much of that sexual tension stuff she'll even understand. Her girlfriends have all turned into a giggling boy-crazy hoard, but she hasn't really hit that stage yet (thank goodness).

So.....bottom line is I'm going to let her read it and I told her if she has any questions or if there are parts of the story she doesn't understand she should let me know and we can talk about it. Her older brother reads like he breathes, and I often read the same books he does just because I like them, and we like to talk about books together, so my daughter is familiar with this book discussion ritual.

Anyway, I read it and I liked it. I hope I like the other books in the series. And I'm just not ready for my little girl to grow up. *sigh*

If you've read Twilight, what did you think of it?