I talked in my last post about rereading Twilight, and well, I’m already finished. I had some thoughts and decided that I’d do a whole dedicated post to just this, so here we are.
Before we get into it all. Here’s my basic history with Twilight: I read the books a few months before the first movie was released and I was about 12 or 13 at the time. I was a huge fan for a while and then moved onto other things. I’ve rewatched the movies multiple times—I find them really comforting when I’m really struggling with my mental health, but I’ve never reread the books. I bought one of the new editions for my 30th birthday last year and decided to reread the first one this week.
I want to say right away that I had so much fun rereading this. It was nice to escape into something that I’d really loved when I was younger.
I feel like Bella gets a lot of criticism from readers. She’s definitely a Mary Sue and she has her aggravating moments, but I kind of related to her more as an adult than I ever did as a teenager. She’s awkward, accident-prone and has her moments where she just seems completely over people and I get that. She actually has some funny moments and I honestly didn’t dislike her as much as I remembered.
Edward though, ugh. Edward has got to be one of the worst book boyfriends. It’s so funny to me that I used to think he was ‘dreamy’ when he’s really just annoying. It’s the constantly going between hot and cold for me. I think reading romance for so long now has kind of ruined me—I like it when my bookish men fall first and hard. Edward just doesn’t live up to that.
The real show-stealers for me are always going to be the rest of the Cullen’s. Alice has always been my favourite, to the point that I got a really bad Alice haircut the summer after I read the books. She’s just so cute, I can’t not love her. Now that I’m older I have a new appreciation for Esme and Rosalie too. I was definitely too young when I first read the series to really understand their stories and even though Rosalie’s story doesn’t even come into this one, just knowing her story makes me feel for her.
The real shock to me was how weirdly paced the whole story is. As I said, I’ve seen the movie multiple times so I knew exactly how things went but the whole thing with James really doesn’t happen until the very end of the book. It was a little wild how so much time was built up of just Bella going about her daily life and then to have these whole thing with James be over in a very tiny section of the book.
After my little rant about Edward up there, it’s probably not that surprising that I think their romance is pretty terrible. They really go from ‘stay away from me’ to ‘I love you’ real quick. Obviously I remembered that, but it’s still weird reading that. I’m pretty sure I scrunched my nose up when they started talking about love and being together forever. As weird as it is, I guess it works it that teenage-y way where everything feels like it’ll last forever. I know I ate that shit up as a teenager.
I’ve decided to rewatch the movies before I continue the series, which might seem kind of silly but I know I’ll want to buy matching editions of the rest of the series and they aren’t out yet. I don’t want to buy cheap copies or even borrow them from my library when I have so much else to read at the moment, but I an always make time for a Twilight movie marathon especially while it’s been cold and dreary this week.
Earl Grey Books 