I've been dreaming about Vampires

And yes, I am totally aware of why I am dreaming about Vampires. It's not exactly hard to guess since all I have been doing lately is reading the Twilight Saga. My poor husband and child, I do fear they think I have abandoned them (well NatNat probably doesn't notice - but my husband might!).

I loved the first three books in the series. Absolutely loved them (Twilight probably being my favourite, with Eclipse a close second). I'm always willing to admit that I go for the mushy romance right off the hop (my favourite movie is The Princess Bride, and my favourite book is The Bronze Horseman). So It's no wonder I like these books.

Sure, they are written for the Young Adult audience, but the story is still a good one. Girl meets boy, girl fall in love with boy, girl finds out boy is actually a vampire, but it's okay because he's a 'vegetarian vampire', and then all sorts of wackiness ensues. Okay so not really on the wackiness, but I don't actually think its my job to spoil the books for you. Go read them yourself.
Books one through three are great. It's this really wonderful love story between Bella and Edward, there is this great supporting group of characters and all of the nearly insurmountable odds they have to face to be together, and in their case it could very easily be 'forever'.

And then there is book four. I just don't get it. Don't get me wrong, the beginning of Breaking Dawn is actually pretty good. It pretty much sticks with what you expect from the series. And then all of a sudden she switches genres, and the whole thing goes wacky sci-fi/fantasy and it's like, huh? I won't spoil it for you, because if you really did choose to read the books you might as well read all of them. But I do think you need to be prepared to deal with the fact that book four, just, simply is not that good. It has its moments (even after part 1), and I'm sure people can/will enjoy it for what it is, eventually. But you kind of need to be prepared for it to be different.

It's either the writing style, the genre switch, she lost interest in the whole thing, or she was writing/doing too many things at once (apparently she wrote The Host at the same time, and I read it first because I wanted to see if I liked her writing style, and I did). I don't really know what the issue is, I'm not the author.

But what I do know is, the book doesn't really match up to the rest of the series. Now, unlike a lot of people (go read the boards on Amazon.com, people are going crazy over there about this), I'm not really upset about it. I'll admit I'm disappointed, but it's not making me less of a fan or anything. It's probably because I only started reading the series last week, I don't have quite the vested interest in the whole thing. So I feel for those people, because I too have been completely dedicated to a book series, but thankfully I wasn't disappointed with the final book that time.

For me it comes down to this: will I read these books again? Honestly, I can see myself reading the first three again (sort of like I read Harry Potter repeatedly, maybe not yearly, but it's certainly on the list - reminds me I should finish that list for you). Will I read book 4 again? Probably the first section, and then I might skip around... a lot.

So to sum up, go, read books one to three. Enjoy them. And then take a deep breath and read book four, if you feel up to it. Or consider the whole thing a trilogy and ignore book 4 completely ('cause you easily could - book 3 ends the right way if you wanted to stop with it).

Now go forth, and read!!

PS - in my dream last night Keifer Sutherland was the vampire, and yes, I am aware he played one in the Lost Boys. Hard to believe that came out when I was 11, wow, I really am that old.