Product Description

Deeply sensuous and extraordinarily suspenseful, TWILIGHT captures the struggle between defying our instincts and satisfying our desires. This is a love story with bite.Isabella Swan+s move to Forks, a small, perpetually rainy town in Washington, could have been the most boring move she ever made. But once she meets the mysterious and alluring Edward Cullen, Isabella+s life takes a thrilling and terrifying turn. Up until now, Edward has managed to keep his vampire identity a secret in the small community he lives in, but now nobody is safe, especially Isabella, the person Edward holds most dear. The lovers find themselves balanced precariously on the point of a knife-between desire and danger.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #59 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 544 pages

Amazon.com Review
"Softly he brushed my cheek, then held my face between his marble hands. 'Be very still,' he whispered, as if I wasn't already frozen. Slowly, never moving his eyes from mine, he leaned toward me. Then abruptly, but very gently, he rested his cold cheek against the hollow at the base of my throat."

As Shakespeare knew, love burns high when thwarted by obstacles. In Twilight, an exquisite fantasy by Stephenie Meyer, readers discover a pair of lovers who are supremely star-crossed. Bella adores beautiful Edward, and he returns her love. But Edward is having a hard time controlling the blood lust she arouses in him, because--he's a vampire. At any moment, the intensity of their passion could drive him to kill her, and he agonizes over the danger. But, Bella would rather be dead than part from Edward, so she risks her life to stay near him, and the novel burns with the erotic tension of their dangerous and necessarily chaste relationship.

Meyer has achieved quite a feat by making this scenario completely human and believable. She begins with a familiar YA premise (the new kid in school), and lulls us into thinking this will be just another realistic young adult novel. Bella has come to the small town of Forks on the gloomy Olympic Peninsula to be with her father. At school, she wonders about a group of five remarkably beautiful teens, who sit together in the cafeteria but never eat. As she grows to know, and then love, Edward, she learns their secret. They are all rescued vampires, part of a family headed by saintly Carlisle, who has inspired them to renounce human prey. For Edward's sake they welcome Bella, but when a roving group of tracker vampires fixates on her, the family is drawn into a desperate pursuit to protect the fragile human in their midst. The precision and delicacy of Meyer's writing lifts this wonderful novel beyond the limitations of the horror genre to a place among the best of YA fiction. (Ages 12 and up) --Patty Campbell

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10 Second Interview: A Few Words with Stephenie Meyer

Q: Were you a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Angel? What are you watching now that those shows are off the air?
A: I have never seen an entire episode of Buffy or Angel. While I was writing Twilight, I let my older sister read along chapter by chapter. She's a huge Buffy fan and she kept trying to get me to watch, but I was afraid it would mess up my vision of the vampire world so I never did.

I don't have a ton of time for TV, and my kids get rowdy when I have on "mommy shows," but I do have a secret fondness for reality shows (the good ones, at least in my opinion). I always TiVo Survivor, The Amazing Race, and America's Next Top Model.

Q: What inspired you to write Twilight? Is this the beginning of a series? Why write for teens?
A: Twilight was inspired by a very vivid dream, which is fairly faithfully transcribed as chapter thirteen of the book. There are sequels on the way--I'm hard at work editing book two (tentatively titled New Moon) right now, and book three is waiting in line for its turn.
I didn't mean to write for teens--I didn't mean to write for anyone but myself, so I had an audience of one twenty-nine year old (and later one thirty-one year old when my sister started reading). I think the reason that I ended up with a book for teens is because high school is such a compelling time period--it gives you some of your worst scars and some of your most exhilarating memories. It's a fascinating place: old enough to feel truly adult, old enough to make decisions that affect the rest of your life, old enough to fall in love, yet, at the same time too young (in most cases) to be free to make a lot of those decisions without someone else's approval. There's a lot of scope for a novel in that.

Q: What is your favorite vampire story? Fave vampire movie?
A: I guess my favorite vampire story would be The Vampire Lestat, by Anne Rice, simply because it's one of the only ones I've ever read. I keep meaning to pick up Bram Stoker's Dracula, because I get asked this question so often and I should probably start with the classics, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Again, I'm afraid to read other vampire books now, for fear of finding things either too similar, or too different from my own vampire world.

Ack! I can't even answer the movie question. I can't remember ever seeing a single vampire movie, outside of clips from Bela Lugosi movies on TV. I don't like true horror movies--my favorite scary movies are all Hitchcock's.

Q: What other young adult authors do you read?
A: My favorite young adult author is L.M. Montgomery I also enjoy J.K. Rowling (but who doesn't?), and Ann Brashares. As a teen, I skipped straight to adult books (lots of sci-fi and Jane Austen), so I'm rediscovering the world of teen literature now.

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Stephenie Meyer's List of Books You Should Read

Anne of Green Gables

Romeo and Juliet

Dragonflight

To Kill a Mockingbird

The Princess Bride

See more recommendations from Stephenie Meyer

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Q&A with Stephanie Meyer

Q: What book has had the most significant impact on your life?
A: The book with the most significant impact on my life is The Book of Mormon. The book with the most significant impact on my life as a writer is probably Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card, with Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier coming in as a close second.

Q: You are stranded on a desert island with only one book, one CD, and one DVD--what are they?
A: The CD is easy: Absolution by Muse, hands down. It's harder to give myself just one movie, but the one I watch most frequently is Sense and Sensibility--the one with the screenplay by Emma Thompson. One book is impossible. I'd have to have Pride and Prejudice, but I couldn't live without something by Orson Scott Card and a nice, thick Maeve Binchy, too.

Q: What is the worst lie you've ever told?
A: My lies are all very, very boring: "No, you really look great in hot pink!" "My children only watch one hour of TV a day." "I didn't eat the last Swiss Cake Roll--it must have been one of the kids." That's the best I've got.

Q: Describe the perfect writing environment.
A: It's late at night and the house is silent, but I'm still (miraculously) full of energy. I have my headphones in and I'm listened to a mix of Muse, Coldplay, Travis, My Chemical Romance, and The All-American Rejects. Beside me is a fabulous, and yet mysteriously low in calorie, cheesecake....

Q: If you could write your own epitaph, what would it say?
A: I'd like it to say that I really tried at the important things. I was never perfect at any of them, but I honestly tried to be a great mom, a loving wife, a good daughter, and a true friend. Under that, I'd want a list of my favorite Simpsons quotes.

Q: Who is the one person living or dead that you would like to have dinner with?
A: I'd love to have a chance to talk to Orson Scott Card--I have a million questions for him. Mostly things like, "How do you come up with this stuff?!" But, if he wasn't available, I'd settle for Matthew Bellamy (lead singer of Muse).

Q: If you could have one superpower, what would it be?
A: I'd want something offensive, rather than defensive. Like shooting fireballs from my hands. That way, you're really open to going either way--hero or villain. I like to have choices.

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From School Library Journal
Starred Review. Grade 9 Up–Headstrong, sun-loving, 17-year-old Bella declines her mom's invitation to move to Florida, and instead reluctantly opts to move to her dad's cabin in the dreary, rainy town of Forks, WA. She becomes intrigued with Edward Cullen, a distant, stylish, and disarmingly handsome senior, who is also a vampire. When he reveals that his specific clan hunts wildlife instead of humans, Bella deduces that she is safe from his blood-sucking instincts and therefore free to fall hopelessly in love with him. The feeling is mutual, and the resulting volatile romance smolders as they attempt to hide Edward's identity from her family and the rest of the school. Meyer adds an eerie new twist to the mismatched, star-crossed lovers theme: predator falls for prey, human falls for vampire. This tension strips away any pretense readers may have about the everyday teen romance novel, and kissing, touching, and talking take on an entirely new meaning when one small mistake could be life-threatening. Bella and Edward's struggle to make their relationship work becomes a struggle for survival, especially when vampires from an outside clan infiltrate the Cullen territory and head straight for her. As a result, the novel's danger-factor skyrockets as the excitement of secret love and hushed affection morphs into a terrifying race to stay alive. Realistic, subtle, succinct, and easy to follow, Twilight will have readers dying to sink their teeth into it.–Hillias J. Martin, New York Public Library
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
Stephanie Meyer's teen-vampire romance offers an appealing heroine in Bella, transplanted from sunny Phoenix to the wet, dreary town of Forks, Washington, and the seductive, secretive object of her obsession, Edward, who may or may not be a vampire. Predictability doesn't keep this spine-tingling tale from being fun, but alas, Ilyana Kadushin's reading, does. Her speaking voice is thin and underdeveloped, and any sense of nuance is nonexistent. Kadushin doesn't try to give the characters personalities, so distinguishing between speakers is difficult. This is one of those rare times in audiobook listening when the writing exceeds the reader's capabilities. Still, the story is engrossing and the characters well drawn, ensuring that older teens will find much to enjoy. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

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Customer Reviews

An Unfortunate Sensation - Why is this so popular?
It is hard to imagine a book line right now that is getting more attention than the Twilight series and in my mind, the reviews and fan response has been completely puzzling. I picked up the books to check out what the hype was about and found myself sadly disappointed. From the very beginning, Meyer's writing is unpolished and does not get better as the books go on, leaving a reader capable of skipping paragraphs of the same repetitive descriptions of teenage angst to get to the actual plot.

The actual plot itself is amazingly mediocre: a completely useless female protagonist with not a single interesting quality finds herself the object of a mysterious boy's affection and finds out that they are two star-crossed lovers because he is a shiny, shiny vampire. Amazing, really, to think that he's a vampire since he can walk around in the daytime and the only problem he might have with the sunlight problem is a slight glossiness people will notice. So the writer has given him all the vampire strengths and literally none of their drawbacks except that he's... shiny, and can't keep his hands off his girlfriend because she smells good. Edward, while being a slightly more interesting character than Bella, becomes utterly unpalatable once he falls into his 'I love you so much, Bella, you're so wonderful Bella' mode that makes up most of the book.

On the subject of the heroine herself, she is perhaps the largest drawback of the book. While the atmosphere of the dreary town of Forks is actually interesting and, in my mind, well described, the main character is a nightmare of wish-fulfillment writing. She plays into every teenage girl stereotype of the shy, awkward, clumsy, helpless girl who not only spends most of her time bemoaning the fact that she is so painfully self-conscious she can't relate to the world, she also can't seem to walk ten feet without falling down and nearly killing herself. This ploy is used SO many times in the book (look Lassie, Bella fell down the well, better go find the Sheriff!) that it quickly loses its meaning. And besides, there is so little to like about the character of Bella that by the time she actually was in mortal danger in the book, I wouldn't have cared if she fell into a wood chipper and died. In short, the largest handicap to this book is its protagonist and that makes for serious issues in the long run.

I won't and can't understand how this book is getting so much attention, except to consider that it is the ultimate in wish-fulfillment fantasy. Everyone wants to be that person that the handsome, perfect stranger finds appealing and wants to have that Romeo-and-Juliet passionate love with the tragic twists and turns and dramatic moments. The fact is, though, that while Shakespeare could pull off something as shmaltzy as Romeo and Juliet well, Meyers just makes me feel like I'm reading bad teen fan fiction, not anything with any substance.

Wonderful love story!
I am a 37 year old married woman and I have to say, this was the best saga I've ever read (and I read, on average, a novel every two days). I was, as was mentioned by another reviewer, a little apprehensive about reading a "young adult" book, as I mostly stick to adult; however, I could not put this down. I'm not even sure I can explain what makes this saga stand out in my mind so much more than any of the other hundreds of books I've read in my adult life. The author just kind of sweeps you up and makes you feel a part of the story.

One of the main reasons women of all ages will like this book is because you don't necessarily become "besotted" with Edward Cullen, but merely the idea of someone who embodies the attributes he possesses. He is definitely a hero after a woman's own heart. I also think, as a young woman or mature woman for that matter, many of us can identify with Bella's view of herself (pleasant but ordinary yet drawn to a man she considers to be the epitome of perfection (whether anyone else sees him that way or not). I think that just captures a bit of what we have all felt at some point in our lives. The fantastical part about this and the part that makes the female reader want to "swoon" is the fact that out of all the females Edward could be interested in - he chooses Bella. Not only does he choose her, but he adores her and lives for her to the point where he overcomes his own nature to just be with her. I think this is what makes our hearts sing as we read this book.

~*Worth Reading*~
Twilight is one of my favorite books. It's a love, drama, & action story, that is very well written. It is about a girl named Bella who moves to a new town, meets a guy that she deems worth going after. His name is Edward & he has to struggle with being a vampire & falling madly in love with her. It is a book that is worth reading over & over again.