Does the Popular Best-Selling Series Twilight Kill the Brain?

Is the sky blue? If you answer yes like most sensible people you will also have the same answer to the question in the title. The first 100 pages felt like consciousness during brain surgery. I think at some level I felt pain at the reading and my wasted 10.99 at my favorite book seller. So I just skipped to the chase and read the last few pages where she-

No I'm not going to put in a spoiler although I could summarize this tome of teenage self consciousness and angst in about three sentences or less. Which I will now do, just because I feel justified in doing it and all good book review articles should talk about the plot at least for a little bit.

So, this "Romancy-adventure book" as my friend so perkily told me at the bookstore when she recommended it, is set in the drear of a fictional town called Forks, Washington. Considering the rain, snow, and ice; I'm sure such a town can fit the bill for the movie that is sure to come out based on this book series. Anyway, Isabella or "Bella" as she is affectionately called by her doting mother and caring but emotional distant Father (cliché anyone?), at the beginning of the book, has just moved in with her Father. She had lived with her mother in Arizona but as she calls the move a self-imposed exile. She deeply cares about her mother but she is looking for a bit of independence and her busy Father (he is the sheriff of the town and goes by the down home name Charlier) is just the place to spread her wings a little. Enter teenage angst stage left, and some self-consciousness stage right with a backdrop of a vampire. At the highschool where she now attends she meets this beautiful group of young people that are children of the local doctor. After this and that and the other thing that I won't bother going into at this juncture she falls in love with the most beautiful young man who is, like the rest of his family, a vampire. They are supposed to stay away from mortals but he decides to take this Bella girl under his wing.

Not quite, three sentences but close, I should combine a few independent clauses together just to make my point. Either way, "Twilight" by mormon author Stephenie Meyer is a very wholesome book, there is no language, no sex, not a single piece of clothing leaves a teenage body. That was refreshing considering this book is written for a young adult audience, but at times it felt like a Disney like brush had been taken to it because there were so many chances for a really steamy sex scene that just weren't taken advantage of. Sex was exchanged for another healthy dose of teenage angst. That got real tiring after awhile because I was not a teenager that long ago, so I don't need to be recalling that period of years plagued by the mental disease of excess hormones and excess self-awareness. To be honest, no one regardless of age should have to endure it. On the same note, however, there was a lot of really adult themes expressed in the book which probably indicates how fast our teens our growing up now.

This little book and the other three that go along with it (Yes there's more unfortunately) has been compared to Harry Potter for its popularity, wide reading audience, and cleaniness of plot and story. I think overall that it does share a certain Potter like quality to it and it has a unique and mass appealing story that is out of the mainstream of American literature that has dominated the last 50 years.

Personally, I would recommend it for a teenager, but not an adult. If anyone needs me I'll be in Fiction and literature.