“So, are you Team Jacob or Team Edward?” This question has been asked of me far too many times. It means choosing between the 107 year old glittery one who enjoys watching the main character sleep despite the fact that he’s not sure he can keep himself from sucking her blood, or the lovesick anger-management teenager who’s not sure if he can keep himself from tearing her to pieces. This itself wouldn’t even be that bad if the book weren’t completely amateur and overdone.

The basic plot of the series can be easily summed up in less than a paragraph. In the first book, the main character, Bella Swan, moves from her mother’s house in Arizona to her father’s in rainy Forks, Washington. After that the books turn into the typical “boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. Boy breaks up with girl. Girl meets someone else. Boy wants girl back. Boy and other boy become friends” story, only the “boy” is a century-old vampire (Edward Cullen), the “other boy” is a werewolf (Jacob Black), and the “girl” (Bella Swan) is so accident prone she’s almost always in danger of her life for some reason or other. These three characters have a painful lack of personality. Edward’s only traits are A. likes going fast B. is incredibly protective of his girlfriend and C. arrogant. Bella had a fine personality in the Twilight, but that quickly drains by the fourth book. Jacob was a typical awkward teenager at first; but then becomes a depressed, over-zealous buff guy.
My question is, why do people say this book is original?

How many vampire and werewolf romances are there? I assure you, if you go to your local bookstore or library, you’re going to find at least five books involving vampires, werewolves, vampires and werewolves, and romance within fifteen minutes without even trying. The earliest vampire literature was written in the eighteen hundreds, and since then, hundreds of other vampire stories have been put on the market.

There’s almost nothing that distinguishes Twilight from any of them except for the style of writing, which itself suggests that Stephanie Meyer read too many “You can write too!” books; any given page shows careful use of topics covered in school and self-help books, such as description, internal thinking, or metaphors, while the story itself is lacking in suspense, action, character development, or even a lot of plot development. Stephanie Meyer may know how to write; given a topic or prompt, I’m sure she could do an amazing essay. However, she knows nothing about writing stories, and even less about writing series.

Admittedly, the books were improving very quickly; the third book, Eclipse, was infinitely better than Twilight. So why was the fourth book so much worse? Almost all the things set in motion in the first book had been concluded in the third book. The fourth showed an amazing lack of planning. The plot was completely sudden with absolutely no foreshadowing in any of the others. If she’d had the imagination, there were plots which tied in neatly to the other three books which she could have used while still keeping the plot she ended up using for the fourth book. However, what annoys me the most about the fourth book was the utterly anticlimactic ending, which abruptly finished an already mediocre book like an executioner’s axe.

I think you should read this book if you enjoy shallow love stories which don’t make you think and something to waste your time. I’m not the kind of person who advocates only reading book you can learn from or which add to your personality; it’s true that I have enjoyed my share of trashy novels. Twilight, however, is incredibly overrated, so it's time for "twi-hards" to wake up: Edward adn Jacob are not real, so you can just relax.