Bella Swan has made the hard choice to leave the city she loves, Phoenix, Arizona, for rainy, dark, gloomy Forks, Washington. Her mom has just gotten remarried and wants to go on the road with her new husband. So Bella, who is just seventeen, volunteered to move to Forks to stay with her father, Charlie.
Bella doesn't expect to be happy in Forks. It's not that her dad is hard to live with. In fact, he bought her a truck to get back and forth to school with, which was pretty nice since Bella had been saving money to buy a vehicle. It's just that Forks is a small town with a depressing climate and not much going on. It doesn't even have a decent library! (Horrors!)
Her first day at her new high school goes OK until biology class. She has to share a lab table with a strikingly good looking boy, Edward Cullen. But Edward seems to despise Bella at first sight, scowling and moving away from her as if she has head lice or something. Bella finds his behavior inexplicable and humiliating. Bella isn't vain, but she knows she isn't a troll so Edward is either a kook or jerk, she is not sure which.
Turns out Edward has several siblings attending this high school too. They are all very attractive yet very aloof. They sit together at lunch and they don't socialize with the other kids. They are all very pale with shadows under their eyes.
One morning, after a storm, Bella wakes up to a world covered in ice. She manages to drive herself to school safely. While standing in the parking lot next to her truck, another student loses control of his car and skids towards Bella. She has no time to flee and faces being crushed between her truck and the car when, out of nowhere, impossibly, Edward snatches her to safety. This is the beginning of the thaw in Edward's attitude to Bella.
Bella comes to realize that Edward is not human. He and his family are all vampires. She also finds out that Edward and his family are reformed vampires, refusing to prey on humans. Instead they go after deer, bears, mountain lions and other big game. However, there are vampires who do prey on humans and, as her relationship with Edward and his family grows, Bella has the misfortune to run afoul of one of these dangerous vampires.
This was a pretty interesting story. It is the first in a series, which, as I understand it, extends to five novels, which is a rather long series. Meyer's vampires are not the stereotypical vampire, they don't sleep in coffins (they don't sleep at all), and they can go out in the sun (but they glitter in the light so that is why they stay out of the sun). In this story she doesn't say if they are sensitive to garlic, don't appear in mirrors or photos and are burned by holy water. They are definitely not the typical vampire. I did have a few problems with Bella falling so hard for a guy who, besides being gorgeous, according to the author, feels cold and hard to the touch, like a corpse. Who would want to cuddle with a guy who feels dead when you touch him? Ewww! To necrophiliac for my taste. Also, since Edward finds Bella mouthwatering, they have to be careful not to get too close in case Edward turns Bella into a snack in spite of himself. So the romance in the book is very tame and low key. Still it was pretty interesting, reading about the author's version of the vampire life.
Review from Loves Vampires.
New Word
Dight: To prepare; to dress, array and put on things; to adorn. "Throughout the vast shadowy world of ghosts and demons there is no figure so terrible, no figure so dreaded and abhorred, yet dight with such fearful fascination, as the vampire, who is himself neither ghost nor demon, but yet who partakes the dark natures and possesses the mysterious and terrible qualities of both."
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