Twilight: The Upside

Everything has an upside, even if you hate everything about Twilight with a burning passion, you really should stop and think about it.

I think what started the spark was Meyer's The Host. I was hearing that people who hated Twilight actually liked The Host. I was curious, but also terrified. I felt like someone feeding a treat to a dog that had bitten off three of my fingers a month ago. Had it not been for a good friend loaning it to me, I probably never would have read it.

The book still sat on my end table for a long time, gathering dust (If you ever read this: Sorry Olive! Nobody likes a dusty book!) because I was actually too scared to read it. The book I was reading at the time, though, eventually ran out of pages and The Host still beckoned, so I decided to read it.

I was actually pretty impressed. It had its problems, like how many character's names start with J that it starts to get confusing about who said what, and it's a little drawn out, but I can say I enjoyed it. Enough to buy my own copy, even.

That was when I realized I didn't hate Stephanie Meyer, I hated Twilight. It happened again when I read The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner. As long as Meyer's golden boy Edward wasn't in a story, it did well. Even then, I have to admit that when I read the Twilight series, and later watched the movies, that there's something there buried under the dung heap of the story. Meyer's writing has a spark, a really good potential, but it's bogged down in a poor choice of content and may never truly see the light of day.

It also took someone telling me that Twilight opened the door for a lot of first-time authors to get published for it to really sink in. When new authors loved Twilight they wrote a book because they loved it so much, when new authors hated Twilight they wrote a book because they hated it so much. "I can do better than that," has been the beginning of a lot of amazing books.

Including Dusted.

Twilight may not have started Dusted, I'm not even quite sure any more, but I can certainly say my disgust at the series certainly provided a good motivator. It has also allowed for the resurrection of books. Most notably L.J. Smith's Vampire Diaries and Nightworld series.

Here are a handful of books that I'm absolutely certain wouldn't have gone far without Twilight's help (and these are just the ones I'm aware of)

Blue Bloods series by Melissa De La Cruz

Hush Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick

House of Night series by P.C. Cast

Darkest Powers and Darkness Rising series by Kelly Armstrong

Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare

Unearthly trilogy by Cynthia Hand

Hex Hall series by Rachel Hawkins

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl


These days I think you're seeing less and less of the supernatural  because now the next gold rush authors are running for is the dystopian overdrive from The Hunger Games (that is, perhaps, another post for another day.)

You also have to give Stephanie Meyer some credit for taking a lot of flak and hatred. Sure, she is probably the most well-known author for having childish hissy-fits, but she's never lashed out very badly at her fans, and she doesn't hate what she's created (jaded actors and rude musicians, please take note)

Taking a step back and analyzing Twilight let me see some very interesting aspects of it and even taught me how to read something in an entirely different light of what is intended in the otherwise shallow meaning. One that I will share with you soon.