Okay, I totally get why I liked this one as a pre-teen.
All my friends in the 7th grade were reading this, I begged my mom to take me to Borders after school one day, I see the book I’m here for and...my mom says no. Huh? No? No. Too much sex. Or something. No, wait until High School.
Sex? Being born into a religious household, something that might have sex in it was like the holy grail. I needed this book as fast as possible and it seemed like my own mother had betrayed me. 

The next day at school I dragged my friend to the car-line where my mom was waiting to take me home. I made my friend (who’s parents my mom liked and trusted very much) explain to her that there was no sex in Twilight. It worked like a charm, just like when my friend years prior convinced my mom to let me take home a copy of the Sims 1 saying that there was “nothing bad” and got censored anyway. 
I read through Twilight in two sittings, hungry for more. My mom followed suit and sped through it, and we were off to get the next book. We were fans from that day on.
I went through the I hate Twilight phase right around the time Breaking Dawn came out. I was a pick-me girl in the sense that I told everyone how stupid the series was and I was only at the midnight release because my mom wanted to read the final book. I wanted to seem cooler than everyone. I secretly liked Twilight. Nay, loved it.

Years later there’s been a resurgence with the movies coming to Netflix and the release of Midnight Sun. I paid $20 for Kindle copies of the books because I knew it was time to re-read Twilight.

And as I said, I totally get why I liked this as a kid. But maybe nostalgia is where this book should have stayed.

Spoilers to follow.

Bella is the average quirky clumsy girl that is moderately attractive but she’ll never see it. Everyone in Forks automatically likes her since she's the new cool girl from Arizona.

Shortly after, we meet the Cullen’s, who everyone loves, etc. Emmet the cool sports guy with his girlfriend, Rosalie the Bitch ™. Jasper the ex-confederate soldier (wtf I never noticed this until re-reading), and his girlfriend Alice, the manic pixie dream girl that ever girl in middle school who liked anime wanted to be. Then there’s singleton Edward, mysterious boy with honey colored eyes that can’t keep them off Bella. 

There’s a lot of bullshit about Edward gaslighting Bella in here that I could elaborate on but its just not worth it. Finally he makes her guess that he’s a vampire after she’s done some research after re-uniting with an old friend, Jacob, who lives on the reservation in La Push and the Cullen’s can’t go there.

They spend what seems like two days together before they’re telling each other they love each other and then during one of the only interesting parts of the book, the family brings Bella to play baseball and now they’re in Arizona in a ballet studio because one of the vampires wants to kill Bella.

Everything leading up to the ballet studio was cringe-y but fine, but the ballet studio was just so... yucky? I don’t know how to describe it. I felt uncomfortable reading that part, James was really creepy and I feel like had Stephanie Meyer been writing for an adult audience, there would have been more to this scene. Anyway, Edward comes and saves the day and everything turns out fine. And no, Bella, you can’t be a vampire yet.

I gave this 3 stars because it was okay. Not great but not that bad I guess. It took me almost two years to re-read, it was very mentally exhausting.