Twilight

“And so the lion fell in love with the lamb..." he murmured. I looked away, hiding my eyes as I thrilled to the word."What a stupid lamb," I sighed."What a sick, masochistic lion.”

Over the years, I kept hearing that the books are so much better than the movies. So, do I now share the opinion that reading the first book is a better experience than watching its adaptation? Yes. Does this mean I think the book is great? Nope.

Regardless, this was not the worst thing I've ever read. As a matter of fact, I've read books with far worse protagonists, writing and plot. All of which are highly recommended on Goodreads and Booktube, which is why I'd picked them up the first place. Let's get back to “Twilight”, shall we?

What I liked:

- The setting. I would actually love to live somewhere similar to Forks, at least for a while. A place that's green all year round and that's scarcely populated. I wouldn't even mind the rain, as long as I didn't have to deal with many people.

- Bella's father. He was a simple man who cared about her, who was concerned about her, yet allowed her a lot of freedom.

- Carlisle Cullen. I liked the idea of a compassionate vampire who became a doctor, of all things.

- I was able to read it fairly quickly even though the pacing was quite slow.

- There was no slut-shaming.

- The author didn't use the “modern” language that's all the rage these days in YA. No mention of “cool”, “hot”, “ass”, “baby”, “bitch” etc.

What I didn't like:

- Bella.She didn't seem so bad, that is until she met Edward. After that her brain turned to mush and her evolution as a character was suspended. She decided she was “unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him”, him being Edward, after having known him only for a week or two, just because he looked like a runway model and he had supernatural abilities.

She “obeyed” and “complied” a lot. She had a pathetically low self-esteem and thought Edward was a god. She didn't question him for a second. She broke her dad's heart as a part of a stupid plan to get away from James. She tripped on her feet and fainted a lot. She almost got killed 3 times in a span of two months.

- Edward. I tried to picture him as Sean Faris (yes, yes, I'm one of those people that don't find Robert Pattinson even remotely attractive), but I still couldn't get behind his character.

He fell in love with Bella because her blood smelled like lavender and he couldn't read her thoughts. He “ordered”, “commanded”, “snapped”, “scowled” a lot. He followed her, watched her sleep, eavesdropped on Bella's private conversations with other people because he needed to protect her. Call me crazy for not thinking this is romantic. However, I'm not that concerned about him. It's not like he's pretending to be a good guy. He admits he's a selfish creature (predator) and he wants what he wants. He might be 100 years old and he might engage in creepy stalking, but that wouldn't be a problem if Bella would understand the implications of all of this and stayed away from him, would it?

- Their relationship. It was so boring and lacking in chemistry I could barely even get angry at the insta-love or lack of reaction on Bella's behalf to all the creepy things Edward did. It's funny that she looked down on Mike for behaving like a puppy around her when she was Edward's pet herself.

- The villains. This twist was even sillier than any of the other ridiculous things sprinkled throughout the book, like Edward shining bright like a diamond...in the sky. See what I did there? Haha. Laughing at my own jokes.

I was actually hoping to like this. In the last couple of years, hating “Twilight” had become so trendy that I started to think that people are doing it just to counter-balance all its die hard fans that created a mass hysteria after the series' release. But, it's not the case, as it turns out. The book offers too much fuel to remain unscathed. Nevertheless, I'm not sorry I read it. It was so frustrating that it was sort of entertaining.