Psychology Student Reads Twilight by Stephenie Meyer For the First Time

I’m doing it. I’m reading Twilight for the first time. I’m taking extensive notes as I go along to take you on this journey with me. (Scroll down to keep up with me as I update)

My narrative thoughts so far:

• I gave this book a shot because I’m extremely bored and being stared at by Edward Cullen seems like a great alternative.
• I never thought I’d relate to Bella Swan, but then I opened the first chapter and boom, we’re in such a similar headspace right now.

“That would explain why I didn’t remember him. I do a good job of blocking painful, unnecessary things from my memory.”

• I feel like Tom in Parks and Rec actually being impressed by the Twilight series.

• That first chapter actually helped me quiet the thunderous thoughts in my head before I went to sleep. It’s like her inner monologue reassured me. Nothing is as scary as it seems in your head. Well, at least, some things.

• The iconic biology class scene, which is arguably one of the funniest scenes in the movie. . . . how did this innocent direction: “Just as I passed, he suddenly went rigid in his seat. He stared at me again, meeting my eyes with the strangest expression on his face — it was hostile, furious.” lead to this:

 

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“He was leaning away from me, sitting on the extreme edge of his chair and averting his face like he smelled something bad. Inconspicuously, I sniffed my hair. It smelled like strawberries, the scent of my favorite shampoo. It seemed an innocent enough odor.”

I’m laughing out loud. That last line. I –

• Edward pretending he doesn’t already know everything about Bella when they’ve just met. . . . Bella, yells into microphone he’s eavesdropping on your conversations from across the room.

• The constant staring for these past 20 pages is getting to me. I don’t think even céline from before sunrise (1995) would like this.

• “Wow, you’re green, Bella,” Mike said nervously.”

It’s that Twilight movie coloring. Also, do I have to pretend to care about her school friends? I’m just here to get a serving of Twilight angst.

• Why are Bella and I both so desperate for connection that someone showing up on a cold morning in a heated car with a jacket on the passenger seat just drive me nuts. I guess it’s the fact that for once Edward didn’t accompany it by some snide remark on her incompetence to care for herself. like I said, Edward was intriguing when he was staring at her from across the room with his mouth shut. Let’s keep it that way. It’s moments like these that you’re like, oh yeah, that’s why Edwards her first choice.

• Why is the author suddenly making Edward likable with like his constant smiles and helping Bella out without the taunting remarks? It’s like she herself couldn’t decide if she liked him or not at the start. I guess that’s the source of Edward’s hot and cold behavior.

“The vampire who wanted to be good — who ran around saving people’s lives so he wouldn’t be a monster . . .”

Those rose-colored glasses are in full effect, huh? You forget the fact of his rage in those moments and his vicious comments at your expense.

“I’m not surprised you heard something you didn’t like. You know what they say about eavesdroppers,” I reminded him.
“I warned you I would be listening.”
“And I warned you that you didn’t want to know everything I was thinking.”

Why does Bella have to worry about her conversations with her friends being analyzed? Let her have friends (even though I hate Jessica, but that’s for another conversation).

• “I supposed I could purposefully put myself in danger to keep him close. . . . I banished that thought before his quick eyes read it on my face. That idea would definitely get me in trouble.”

It’s not your words that “get you in trouble.” It’s his rage that he doesn’t control. It’s on him. Not on you.

• “Should I . . . ?” I tried to disengage myself, to give him some room.
  His hands refused to let me move so much as an inch.
  “No, it’s tolerable. Wait for a moment, please.”

When Edward has to stop kissing Bella so he won’t devour her whole in one bite… #relatable

• “And so the lion fell in love with the lamb…,” he murmured. I looked away, hiding my eyes as I thrilled to the word.
  “What a stupid lamb,” I sighed.
  “What a sick, masochistic lion.”

I can’t believe this is the most quoted piece in Twilight.

• “How often did you come here?”
  “I come here almost every night.”
  I whirled, stunned. “Why?”
  “You’re interesting when you sleep.” He spoke matter-of-factly. “You talk.”

He’s admitting this so casually. I-

“Oh no!” I hung my head. He pulled me against his chest, softly, naturally.
“Don’t be self-conscious,” he whispered in my ear. “If I could dream at all, it would be about you.”

We’re in too deep at this point . . . .

“The glory of first love, and all that. It’s incredible, isn’t it, the difference between reading about something, seeing it in the pictures, and experiencing it?”

All logic is gone at this point because he’s behaving nicely

• Bella and Edward after being together for one whole day:

“I love you,” I whispered.
“You are my life now,” he answered simply.”

– “If I was too hasty . . . if for one second I wasn’t paying enough attention, I could reach out, meaning to touch your face, and crush your skull by mistake.”

Bella why aren’t you perturbed by that?

– “Maybe it’s none of my business, but I don’t think that is such a good idea.”
“You’re right,” I agreed. “It is none of your business.”

Insolent teen angst. I was about to say respect your elders, but then I remembered Edward’s age. . .

• Naive: thinking this book would be just about Bella and Edward rubbing faces. I forgot books with plot points still exist. I feel robbed. I thought they were building up to something more later on… but I guess four books exist for a reason.

• Me being infatuated with Twilight: realizing I’m rushing through the daily tasks that distract me from going back to reading. I wonder if I’m past the point of no return?

• We want more Bella and Edward scenes – a sentence I never thought I’d utter when I first started reading. But damn it, they somehow got under my skin with all their tender scenes together

• “Can I cut in?” he asked tentatively, glancing at Edward for the first time. I was shocked to notice that Jacob didn’t have to look up. He must have grown half a foot since the first time I’d seen him.”

My boy Jacob is all grown up.

• “Twilight, again,” he murmured. “Another ending. No matter how perfect the day is, it always has to end.”

I can’t believe it’s over. I was just getting settled into the story when I reached the epilogue, secretly hoping it would be a long ending. My hope for the next book – as the whole Jacob vs Edward ordeal develops – is that the author doesn’t settle for returning those tiring red flags so that it’ll influence to stan one guy over the other. Make me love them both. Give me tender Edward getting breathless at Bella’s proximity, or as close to breathless as vampires get. And give me sweet Jacob bringing Bella back from the brink of her frenzy over Edward. I want a good duel. May the most respectful man win.

In conclusion, this Psychology student is well aware of the mess this romance presents, but boy, what a necessary distraction it is for this period of time.

Thank you for keeping up with my extensive notes, especially those who kept up with my tweets as I was reading @bookspoils. Let me know if you want me to rewatch the Twilight movie first or continue straight onto book two!

In case you’re interested in tagging along, check out a refresher of the series here:

Review: Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1) by Maggie Stiefvater

“You are made of dreams and this world is not for you.”

Right when I thought my Ronan Lynch obsession had reached its peak, Call Down The Hawk comes out.

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Please tell me how it’s been three full years since The Raven King came out and concluded one of the best series out there? It’s unreal. Time is just an illusion.

I still remember cracking open the first book, The Raven Boys, waiting to see if I’ll be impressed. I was completely hooked on the first line. And I sped through the series in a few days’ time. I lived with these characters for months after. I heard their lines echoed in my thoughts.

This new release couldn’t have made me happier. Having my favorite character grow alongside me is a perk granted to few. I don’t take it lightly. Having new iconic Ronan Lynch lines is a perk I don’t take for granted, as well. Having stories about his childhood? In love. Seeing his perspective on ground-breaking scenes in The Raven Cycle? Love. Seeing Declan Lynch break out of his mold? Give me more. G I V E   M E   M O R E.

Like my reviews for The Raven Cycle, I have to mention my favorite gems in here. Future me, this is all you need to know before you start on book 2 in this new trilogy:

Spoilers ahead

• The main theme of Ronan’s conflicting thoughts on being left behind felt all too real.

“He loved the Barns, he was bored of the Barns, he wanted to leave, he wanted to stay.”

It’s truly heartbreaking to see a gang as tightknit as the gangsey all on their separate paths. From having late-night conversations in the bathroom/kitchen in The Raven Cycle to barely having once a week text contact was breaking me. This is the part of growing up that no one warns you about. So it’s no secret then that I didn’t take for Adam’s new friend group, and I was beyond glad that we didn’t have to spend more than one scene with them. They just don’t get it like the gangsey does.

• Dauntless Declan. I am so utterly impressed with his character development. I always wanted to see more of him and Matthew, and I got just that. The dynamic between the brothers makes my heart shine.

“Thank God,” Declan said, retrieving his car keys.
“You can if you like,” Matthew said. “But I dressed myself.”
He shot a look at Ronan to make sure his joke had been funny.”

This is such a younger sibling thing to do that I can’t help but smile.

• But then my mind always returns to that heartstopping moment when the Lynch brothers didn’t know if Matthew was safe. All you want is to know that they’re okay so you can breathe in relief. It showcased just how entangled they are.

“Ronan didn’t know who he would be without them.”

• I highlighted so many Declan quotes because he just gets it. He understands how it feels to numb yourself so as to not feel anything until there’s a glimmer of hope for a better life.

“Because the safest shape was being both unknown and unchanging”

The Lynch brothers make me feel alive. They understand my deepest fears and most intimate thoughts. Whenever I have the chance to read their words I know I’ll feel a little less alone.

• Ronan stepping up to help someone he doesn’t even know truly showcases just how much he’s grown. He’s become his own Gansey. He understands himself now better than ever, and it was refreshing to see him open himself up and be vulnerable to help another dreamer. The moment he revealed the significance of the leather bands on his wrist was another hit.

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Again, it’s a Declan quote that tells it like it is:

“Declan hated that he loved someone who wasn’t real.” 

• Besides, did anyone else perceive Bryde as a healthy Kavinsky? Both of them taught Ronan to take charge of his dreams. One did it a bit more provocatively, but still. I feel like he’ll have a big part in Ronan’s life. And I’m not sure, what with Declan’s proclamation, if it’s simply platonic: “Adam wasn’t really enough for him, either, but Declan knew he hadn’t gotten that far yet.”

• The saddest part was feeling so good reading this book and taking my time with it but also knowing that with each chapter I enjoyed, it took me closer to the end. It came to an end all too soon. I was both happy and sad reading this.
• Also, this is how you write a follow-up book after years. You don’t info drop everything that happened over the course of four books in the first chapter. You sprinkle it in when called for. So I immensely appreciated that little detail of not dropping everything on the reader immediately. (This is something that really bothered me when starting the third book of The Diviners, “Before The Devil Breaks You”.)
• Oh, and I encountered the perfect song that captures the darkness and subtle movements in this novel:

The first few seconds of the music playing without any words really has it all.

What else is there to say but that I need the second book now more than ever. Anticipating this release was less gruesome because I had no idea what was awaiting me. Now I know and I want my daily dose of Ronan Lynch.

Check the dreamer out for yourself with my Amazon Affiliate link:

Girlhood and Coming-of-Age Review: The Girls from Corona del Mar by Rufi Thorpe

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I was on the search for a lightweight book to bring with me for a day full of travel, when the simple beauty of this cover, filled in tan, freckled skin, enthralled this fellow tan, freckled gal to pick it from the tucked away library shelf. Funnily enough, I made a trek back to the library later that same day to grab the book because it wouldn’t escape my mind from that morning sighting when I had failed to pick it up.

Rainbow Rowell recommended Rufi Thorpe’s Dear Fang, With Love years ago, which meant for me that this author would nail down life specificities the way I enjoy in Rowell’s books. The Girls from Corona del Mar did not disappoint within the first page, reading about a loving family’s presence in Lorrie Ann’s life.

And it took me a single sitting, reading swiftly through ten pages, to realize this was something to hold on to. I particularly enjoyed how the first couple of pages started with a tantalizing proclamation, “You’re going to have to break one of my toes,” then veered off to familiarize these characters, and ended the paragraph the same way it started so that we’re included in their motives; a full circle.

Set in the mid-90s, The Girls from Corona del Mar follows two best friends, Mia and Lorrie Ann, through spot-on observations on life, growing together and apart, and always having that nature pull to return to each other. This read like an extremely attentive and introspective novel, full of vivid stories on Mia’s lifelong friendship with Lorrie Ann. My mind was bursting with all that I wanted to note down with each page I read. You know it’s a good book when you close your eyes at the end of the day and continue completing the story in your head.

Normally, friendships between girls are stowed away in boxes of postcards and ticket stubs, but whatever was between me and Lorrie Ann was not so easy to set aside.

I was surprised to find a unique storytelling mode where, instead of having two narrators who each tell their own tale, we follow Mia’s perspective of Lorrie Ann’s toils through the details Lor gives her best friend. You can peek this in the passage below:

“I love you,” Lorrie Ann lied. (Was it a lie? I never knew, exactly. I couldn’t understand her love for Jim and so I made my peace with Lor’s decisions by assuming her feelings for him were either feigned or a delusion, but perhaps they were not. Perhaps she loved him with the same animal part of herself that couldn’t let that baby go.)

I really liked how the author gained control with this little insert because Mia went a little off-task into Lor’s (the name Lorrie Ann is a pain to type) world, and the usage of first-person brought it back to the narrator.

I’ll be honest by saying right off the bat I was as wrapped around Lorrie Ann’s finger as much as Mia. Something about the utter kindness and goodness of her always shone so brightly on the page. It’s best told in this incident that captures Lor’s character through the author’s storytelling:

Once, when we were about ten, Lorrie Ann had been given too much change at the Chevron snack shop: she had paid with a ten, but the man must have thought she gave him a twenty. Lorrie Ann didn’t even notice until we were five blocks away, and then insisted we walk all the way back so that she could give him that unearned ten-dollar bill, which as I recall was soft and wrinkled like wilted lettuce. I am sure Lorrie Ann would never remember that day, such an insignificant anecdote, but in my mind it became a central organizing allegory about the differences between us.
Everything I had in life was half stolen, a secret, wilt-y ten-dollar bill that Lorrie Ann would have been too good to keep, but which I could not force myself to give away.

What makes so much of these eyeful remarks is how grounded in reality they are.

I was initially won over by Lorrie Ann with this truthful statement when faced clearly, at only eighteen, with an impossible choice: “But don’t you learn to love someone?” Lorrie Ann asked.

This right here is what too many novels fail to realize when they proclaim that love is all or nothing. Love isn’t some overbearing emotion that takes control of your sane thought process, love is something that you need to discover how to do with morality. “You don’t fall in love. You grow in love.” Love is recognizing the grandiosity of the person standing before you; love is including that person within your own being.

Her thought process of said impossible choice is demonstrated touchingly. She had this terrible death happen within her family, which she concludes as her fault for not being good enough or observant enough of the signs in her life, so she doesn’t want to set off something now that’ll make bad things appear back in her life. She chooses what she deems the right thing. What follows changes the trajectory of her life and Mia’s along with her.

And yet it was not me but Lorrie Ann whom the vultures of bad luck kept on visiting, darkening the yard of her house, tapping on the panes of her windows with their musty, blood-crusted beaks.“Wake up, little girl!” they cried.“We’ve got something else for you!

I felt suspended the entire time I read through this reflective and tumultuous story. So much of this novel is built on the many tragedies that befall Lor despite her best. And I kept wallowing over just how many there are… I mean, I came to relish whenever Lor walked back into Mia’s life, though knowing it’s only when something unfortunate happened made it a bittersweet pill to swallow.

At a certain point, when the only times these two communicate is when something bad occurs to Lorrie Ann, it became an exhausting process of “Oh, what now?” It read like a condensed version of A Little Life, which I liked for the subtle quips on life but disliked immensely for throwing tragedy after tragedy my way. It takes away from the realness of life when we only meet these two characters when tragedy strikes. I wanted to spend more time in the in-between moments that make up a lifetime. When everything’s shit, however, it makes you appreciate little gestures of kindness, simple as a sweet nurse over the phone reassuring Lorrie Ann.

On a random note, I enjoyed how the title chapters are indicant of what’s ahead. It’s a little touch that shows how much a book means to an author.

And I’m still so in awe at how this book kept me enthralled page by page with its eyeful observations. This is an author that lets no moment slip by; you have to be really sensitive of your reality to succeed in writing down what you see in real life. And I, for one, am a complete sucker when it comes to introspective novels that reveal a deeper layer that lies within us.

The Girls from Corona del Mar nails down the complexity of maintaining a long-distance friendship. I admired, in particular, what was said about feeling like a character in a book, like, you don’t exist unless I pick you up.

“That came out awful, but what I mean is that when you are a half a world away, it seems more like something happening in a novel, you know, and we’ve lived apart for so many years now that you are kind of like that for me, except when I see you, then you are suddenly terribly real, and that made Jim’s death real and now I feel like I can’t catch my breath because everything is too real for words.”
Lorrie Ann looked at me critically for a moment, as though I were a gem she were assessing through one of those tiny eyepieces. Then she said, “I know exactly what you mean. For most of the year you are just a character in a book I’m reading. And then when you do show up, I think:  Oh, God, it’s her! It’s her. The girl I knew when I was a kid. My friend.”

This is such a sweet moment too real for words… And then this moment on how talking over the phone never fully captures the true experience in a single phrase: “I’m not sure,” Lorrie Ann said, and I wished I could read her face.”

They hold this interesting dynamic wherein Mia feels forever endowed by Lorrie Anne’s virtue. Her “opposite twin.”

I did not pursue my relationship with either for personal reasons, but because I sincerely believed they were the two best specimens of humanity I had yet to run across on the planet.

But when this book turns bad, it goes down all the way. It hit a point of no return after the 150-page mark, and I was left dumbfounded. I felt truly betrayed by the inorganic change in character happening halfway through. I had spent so much time with this book, singing its praises, only to have this abrupt tomfoolery wherein the most moral character had everything immoral thrown her way. I’m still in a state of shock. It came to the point where I had to point the book cover face down on my nightstand, till its fast return to the library the following day, because  I couldn’t bear to look at it without some semblance of anger flaring up inside me. It felt like two completely different stories were being told: One of genuine storytelling, using many sharp observations about family life, and telling a truthful tale of girlhood. And the other is focused on tearing down what we build up for the past 100 pages. Like, when Mia starts being the moral compass for Lorrie Ann that’s when you know something fishy is going down in the storytelling.

 

 

This unnatural change of pace made me feel beyond exasperated. It’s all that I had been warned about on immorality was shown with a turn of a page. W H Y ??? I’ll just say one thing: Those questioning the system of justice while claiming that ridding a child of its life because of a disability are exactly those that the system exists for. I mean:

“Zach’s suffering is not more than a child’s in the Congo just because we are genetically related.”

How is one supposed to react calmly to reading such utter BS? She’s talking so coldly about her own son, and I’m wondering how this is the same person from the start of this book. I cannot stand when good characters are destroyed this way. This felt like an amateurish and insensitive dissection on a character’s life.

I just don’t have the patience anymore to deal with such crude remarks being made for n, such as comparing genocides and reducing both in the process of doing so.

Cue my search for a new favorite book to calm my storming rage.

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