Stephenie Meyer is a phony

Dear Stephenie Meyer,

When you appeared on the scene with Twilight, I took notice. Suddenly, your book started appearing on all my high school students' desks regardlesss of whether they were in my junior advanced American Literature students to my freshmen low-achieving group. After SSR, the girls would close their books gently, all resembling the elation a teenage girl has after her first kiss. My students begged me to read the book too and I was only too happy to oblige-- I'd do anything to encourage my reluctant readers to read.  Like my students, I enjoyed the book and wished that my boyfriend would act like Edward. His response, " You want me to bite you?!?" Missed point aside, it was as an enjoyable a read as any of my beach reads.

I wouldn't extoll its literary merit. Her syntax and sentence structure are abominable-- she enjoys long, confusing sentences when a short one would suffice. Her vocabulary doesn't fit in with the rest of her writing style-- you can tell she obviously used a thesaurus for some words. Example: The gloominess of Forks isn't persistent, overwhelming, or depressing, it's "omnipresent." Omnipresent is definitley the wrong word choice here.  As for grammar, Meyer seems to enjoy passive voice just as much as Edward enjoys Bella's smell. Her storyline is predictable; it's a storyline seen throughout literature, just with vampires. To me, it's a "beach read" and therefore not true "literature".


When Breaking Dawn broke, I bought it the first day and eagerly consumed it. Like my students, I was dying to know how it would end. I was extremely disappointed. For one, the book is much too long. The real conflict is Bella's abnormal pregnancy. We want to know if she lives or dies. Once it's clear that she in fact does both, we are left expecting a much bigger climax. After all, books are comparable to earth quakes. There are always warning rumbles before the real damage. Not so in this book. The conflict between the Cullen's and the Volturi is anticlimatic. It is a storyline that has been repeated throughout the series.. enough is enough! End the book with Bella becomes a vampire, THE END. In addition, the book was written as if Meyer was anticipating being asked to turn it into a screenplay and wanted to save herself some work. That is the ONLY reason I can give for certain scenes, such as the busted headboard and pillows. The characters also have had personality implants. Edward, all that is male, offers up Bella to Jacob for the sake of procreation? I don't think so. More realistically, Jacob could be a sperm donor and God knows that the Cullens have enough money for IVF. But the physical act, nuh uh. Jacob falls in love with Bella's baby? Awkward! I can see that Meyer wants Edward to be sweet and Jacob to be happy, but it just doesn't work. The last thing that really bothers me is the gratuitous sex scenes. As a teacher, I recommended the Twilight series to my students because it promoted abstinence and morals. I read book 4, and was appalled by the content! It is a book that is NOT appropriate for the middle school age bracket.

Meyer's greed also bothers me. She is taking this Twilight thing for all that it's worth: rock concerts, movies, speaking gigs, and action figures. Her other book, The Host, is being made into a movie. While Twilight had some light plot pleasure, The Host has no redeeming qualities. I can't say that I blame Meyer for capitalizing on her 15 minutes of fame. She knows that she can't write worth a lick. The jig soon will be up, and she will fade into obscurity like every other flavor of the week.

Just don't ever compare her to J.K. Rowling or incur that wrath of Stephen King. This is from a recent interview with USA Today. "[J.K.] Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good."  King says Meyer's secret is "writing to a whole generation of girls and opening up kind of a safe joining of love and sex in those books. It’s exciting and it’s thrilling and it's not particularly threatening because they’re not overtly sexual."

King obviously hasn't read Breaking Dawn.