One of my quaint quirks is that I can’t leave a book unfinished once I’ve started reading it. It took me months to read “Anna Karenina” even though it was the darkest, slowest moving plot line known to mankind. I even stuck through to the end, though it did slow my progress and motivation down slightly, when a friend came over, saw the book on our coffee table (with the bookmark clearly in the MIDDLE of the book, mind you) and said, “You know she dies in the end.” I have faced many an obstacle, read many a series of words strung together that didn’t necessarily please me (no need to mention ‘The Kite Runner’ is there?) but I stuck it out to the end. That has all changed.

The book ‘Twilight’ changed me.

I had heard from a great friend, one that I would permanently ink myself with if I had the chance, that she had loved this book series. She said she had enjoyed these books so much that she had become relatively reclusive, shutting herself away from the world with her nose stuck between some pages. Buoyed by her review, I bought the book while we were in Thailand, and thought of starting it while we were still there, but wanted to give the respect to the other books that had been brought to me by a friend. I don’t like books “jumping the line”. They need to be managed.

When its turn came, I gladly picked up the book, fully expecting to fall in love with the story from the beginning. How could I not? It was the classic tension-filled love story, this time between a teenage girl and a hot vampire. How could it be bad, right? After Chapter one, I nearly forgot that I had started reading a book; its grip on me was that loose. With each passing chapter, I became more and more annoyed by the author’s writing style. Days went by between putting the book down and picking it back up again. It was not the page-turner I had been expecting.

First complaint, she used the word handsomer. While I have come to find out (I did research because it bugged me that much. Yes, I’m that much of a geek.) that this is a grammatically correct term; it is old fashioned. I do personally prefer “more handsome”. Secondly, why must every spoken sentence be qualified by “his eyes narrowed” or “she said coldly” or “he growled while gripping his hands tightly into fists”? One thing I learned through reading many well written works is that a good author will respect the intelligence of his/her audience. If a scene is appropriately staged, a conversation doesn’t need qualifier after qualifier after agonizing qualifier. It became so annoying that I found myself rolling my eyes after each spoken sentence when I read the words, “she hissed”, which was also uncreatively overused. I understand that this book was written for a younger audience. The iconic Harry Potter series was also written for a younger audience. I was impressed by Rowling’s ability to paint an incredibly detailed canvas with words while at the same time not alienating her young nor her adult audiences. Thirdly, I often got the impression that the author came to a point where she just knew that she couldn’t use the word “hissed” one more time on the page, so she had to find a different way to explain to the reader that there was this ANGST and TENSION brewing between her characters because she just didn’t think YOU WERE GETTING IT, so she had to turn to her thesaurus to find words like, “infinitesimally” when describing how his eyes were narrowing yet again when he was glaring at the girl he loved but couldn’t love because he shouldn’t love her, but gawd!, did he love her and he couldn’t help himself.

I only made it to chapter 5. My husband sat back slightly after I complained again about the writing style and the author treating me like an idiot and said, “If it bothers you so much, why don’t you just stop reading it?” But I can’t stop! I have a personal policy against not finishing reading a book. “Don’t waste anymore of your life on it.” He was right! And he gave me the permission I needed to release myself from my personal expectations.

I re-gifted the book to my neighbour’s 17 year old daughter who LOVED it. She is, obviously, in the right age demographic for this book; I’m happy for her that she liked it so much. For the first time in my life, I’m just going to wait for the movie. My inner book nerd is gasping and clutching at the pain of her heart breaking in her chest. I never thought I would say those words, but there they are for the world to see: Waiting. For. The. Movie.

Thanks a lot Stephenie Meyer for writing such a terrible piece of fiction that I had to change my policy. I look forward to not reading any of your books in the future.