29 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
A Guilty Pleasure!!!, October 23, 2000
This book is a guilty pleasure! The negative reviewers are, I am sad to say, correct about the downfalls of the story...Bella does love Edward at the expense of her life, her needs, her desires, and she plays the helpless victim role over and over. Edward is domineering and controlling of her, and the anti-feminist themes that this creates make me cringe. Therefore, I could see this book being harmful for anyone who does not have a very good sense of self. But if you know who you are and what you stand for, this book will do no harm to you. I read this book in 4 days and loved every minute of it! I think that in order to really enjoy this book, you need to frame it as a fantasy, because that is what it is. It is a hot, passionate fantasy made even hotter by the fact that all of Edward and Bella's physical contact has an edge of danger. This book is oozing with passion, and I love love loved it! Yes, girls, we do not need to be saved by a man, but darn it it sure is romantic! I think that the draw of this book, for me, was the way it made me feel when reading it. As strong and independent women who can support themselves in the world on our own, we have been taught to be skeptical or to even avoid the idea that we need love to complete us, that we can't live without love, that sometimes we need to be rescued. However, I think that women also need to remember that we are women, we are feminine, beatiful, and part of feminism means that we have the right to make our own choices, and if we want to fantasize about true love and being rescued, that is our perrogative. This book helped me to reconnect with that part of my feminity, and that I think is what I really loved about it. This is also probably the same reason that I liked the movie Pretty Woman, and that I sometimes secretly watch the Girls Next Door on E. I have already ordered books 2 and 3 and look forward to reading them.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
A Great Modern Romance, August 21, 2000
What started as a simple dream one night became one of America's favorite books. Meyer writes the tale of Bella Swan, an ordinary teenage girl trying to survive high school. But her ordinary world is soon turned upside down when she meets Edward Cullen. Edward is everything any girl would want; beautiful, pale, protective, strong, chivalrous and kind. But there is one hitch, Edward is a vampire!

This book follows the life of Bella as she struggles to make sense of her now completely crazy life and her crazy love for Edward. And she soon discovers that being in love with a vampire has its dangers. I loved this book and can say I was obsessed with it for months after I read it. I encourage everyone looking for a great modern romance to try this one out.

25 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
The tension left me breathless and up all night., March 4, 2000
Look, it's a young adult book but I didn't know that when I bought it in a rush on my way to the airport for an overnight business trip. By the time my plane left the tarmac, I was deeply entrenched and didn't put the thing down(except to drive to my hotel, and even then I was tempted at every stop light) until I finished it at 5am.

I'm not a fan of the romance genre. Nor am I a reader of the paranormal, although this book is making me rethink that heartily. This book is about Bella and how she falls in love with a vampire at her new school. Wow, just reading that makes me cringe, but this was truly an excellent read. What little I've read of adult romance leaves a bad taste in my mouth- poorly developed characters and graphic sex leading to a too rapid denoument. This book is skillfully written. The author creates an enormous tension by pitting the vampire's love against his blood lust. Can Edward love Bella? Or will he have her for dinner?

But seriously, Bella cannot figure out why Edward is so repulsed by her in the beginning. We come to learn he is tormented by his nature as a vampire which he must fight constantly in order to pass as 'normal'. To make matters worse, Bella is not just any juicy human to him, she is special to his senses, a sort of kobe beef of the human ilk. So why not just have his way with her? Well, she fascinates him because unlike all the other humans, he cannot read her thoughts and then, of course, she loves him.

This is an excellent romance with well-drawn characters and an interesting premise. The author wields a deft hand to the tension between the characters and their desires.

Ignore the fact that it is a young adult novel, or don't. I'm 32, a business woman and mother of two small girls and was slightly mortified when I realized I'd picked up a teen romance novel, egads! But I got over it and I'm telling you, it's not just for kids! You won't be sorry you picked this one up, unless of course you have absolutely anything to get done in the ensuing hours.