I thought this book was Amazing

At seventeen, Bella is undergoing several changes in her life.  She is leaving her newly remarried mother behind to travel with her baseball playing husband. She is leaving sunny Phoenix, Arizona to move in with her father in gray and rainy Forks, Washington.  Bella is doing what's best for her mother, all the while planning on being miserable in a town and climate she despises.

But changes like geography and living arrangements seem small and insignificant when she meets Edward Cullen.  Edward is like no other boy she has ever met… ever will meet.

I put off reading this book for years due to all of the hype that surrounded it.  Whenever a book is talked about so much, and built up so much, I am almost always disappointed somehow.  So I buried the title in my ‘to be read pile' and put it off as long as humanly possible.  Then the movie came out, more hype.  But this time, I couldn't wait any longer… I had to finally read the book.

I wasn't let down, not at all.  It's hard to describe my reaction to the book; I was swept away by the sweetness.  I was intrigued by the innocence.  I loved it, effortlessly, and it was so much more than I thought it could be.  It lived up to the hype and then some. 

Bella in a lot of ways is the typical teenage girl.  She sees herself one way, when others see her in another way.  Pairing her, romantically, with a vampire seems an unlikely match, but it really was perfect.  They fit.

This, to me, is a classic and beautiful romance.  There is a hint of tragedy looming above the young loves, but like all true romances, they look beyond that, absorbed in the here and now.  A lot of times I was moved to tears by the genuine emotions the story evokes.  It's so much more than another romance, so much more than another vampire tale, so much more than a young adult fiction story.  It's a compelling combination of wonderful that makes it absolutely brilliant!

Cherise Everhard, December 2008