This is not your average rave about "Twilight". In fact, I hated the book. Nearly everyone I know has read and absolutely loves the series, but I couldn’t even finish the first book!

Bella is a whiny, self-centered character who thinks she is the best. She feels sorry for herself every chance she gets, and she always relies on someone else to fix her problems. She always has something to complain about, and she can never deal with her own life. She is just plain annoying.

Edward is depicted as a hero, and he is always the one who conveniently shows up to save Bella from some new danger. Meyer’s description of him is not only sexist, as was mentioned by Catherine Stafford of New Paltz, NY, in the April 2009 issue, but she continually uses the same verbs to describe him. How many times can you say that he “chuckled”? It really gets old after a while, as does the ongoing description of his “perfect beauty”. Find some new words, Meyer.

Furthermore, this book has no plot. I managed (painstakingly, might I add) to get through the first 300 or so pages. In this time, all that happens is that Bella meets Edward and thinks she is in love with him. If it takes 300+ pages to get to the action, then I say don’t waste your time reading it. Meyer is obviously not a strong writer if she can’t write about anything interesting in the first twenty pages, let alone dragging out the nothingness for 300.

I believe that one reason that Meyer’s books are so widely-read is because she attended Brigham Young University, a Mormon college. Kids and teens whose parents would normally forbid a book about vampires have allowed their kids to read the Twilight series. Twilight was published in 2005, and didn’t becoming supremely popular until it was learned that her alma mater was a religious university. This is discriminatory in my eyes, simply because there are so many truly good books out there that teens aren’t allowed to read because the author isn’t a graduate of a certain institution. The collective interest in this book worries me because of the mob mentality that it inspires. The citizens of America shouldn’t be so influenced by one book.