Before the Twilight Saga was a movie series, it was books. It was a series of books that I gave to my stepdaughter when she was in the eighth grade. I hadn’t read them myself – at that time, I considered myself too old for young-adult literature, and I’d never pre-screened the books my son read, so it honestly didn’t occur to me to check them out first. I knew the basics of the story and that it was hugely popular with girls in her age group, and I also knew my stepdaughter had an interest in goth trappings and paranormal stories that also wasn’t uncommon at that age, so I thought she might enjoy the books.

She did like the first one, for the most part. But she got rather fed up during New Moon and didn’t finish it, and has never even opened Eclipse. (Breaking Dawn isn’t even on the radar.) She has actively shunned the movies based on the series, although she has lately considered watching them on DVD with her best friends – fellow Twilight-haters – just to snark on them. Based on what I’ve come to learn about the story over the last few years, I think she has the right idea. Other considerations aside (like the quality of the writing), this series is perpetuating ideas that girls and young women don’t need, and yet are particularly susceptible to. The lure of the “bad boy,” the idea that you just can’t live without “the one”…it takes YEARS for some of us to un-learn this stuff!

“Bella is an idiot and Edward is a stalker.” Not much gets past that girl…