Bella Swan is new to the small town of Forks, Washington.  As she begins her first few days at a new school she feels even more the awkward outsider.   In Bella's biology class she is partnered with Edward Cullen, a beautiful and mysterious boy that she instantly develops a crush on. But to Bella's dismay he seems to want nothing to do with her until one day he starts talking to her out of the blue and begins to be her constant companion.  The more time they spend together the more Bella realizes that there is something not quite right about him; his beauty and perfection are seemingly inhuman.  When Bella learns that Edward is a vampire he fears that she will become afraid of his dark side and want nothing to do with him.  But Bella is already lost in her love for Edward and becomes fascinated by his world.  That fascination ends up putting Bella and her family in danger when a rival vampire enters Forks and sets his sights on Bella as his next victim.  Edward moves quickly to get Bella out of danger, but the rival vampire is tenacious and tricks Bella into his grasp.  Edward arrives just in the nick of time to save Bella.  He becomes her knight in shining armor rescuing her from danger which only deepens Bella's love for Edward and his dark world.

This book is set up to be the ultimate teenage girl fantasy of having the hottest guy in school fall madly in love with them.  Since the target audience for this book is teens I think they can fall for this kind of love story pretty easily, but reading this as an adult and being a bit more jaded in the love department it was really hard for me to get into Bella and Edward's romance.  I have read other young adult fantasy books and enjoyed them but I found Twilight to be a bit dull.  The teenage love angst just kept getting repeated over and over again, with not much happening in the story.  The plot was pretty predictable; I just knew that Bella was going to end up in some sort of danger that Edward would have to rescue her from. 

I have to say that I was a bit disappointed by this book considering all the hype it has received.  I probably did not get everything I could out of the story because I am far from my teenage years, but now I have the dilemma of whether or not to continue with the series.  Do the next few books get any better?  I'll have to read a lot of good reviews to convince me to pick up New Moon.  In the meantime there are a lot of new books coming out in the next few weeks that I am looking forward to reading, so after I get through them I'll have to reevaluate coming back to the Twilight series or not.

For fans of the Twilight series, the official movie website is up.  Not much content on it, just a teaser to get fans excited for the movie.