...and it was bad, but not that bad. I read it because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about (and a copy was sitting around the house). As someone who's neither female nor a teenager, I don't fit the target audience, but I figured I'd give it a go.

The bad:

• The writing, both on a sentence and paragraph level, is atrocious. Sentences are confusing and often don't lead into each other. Same with paragraphs.

• The story is a bit hard to accept -- not the whole vampire thing, but the 100-year-old vampire goes to high school and falls in love with a 17-year-old girl, but whatever, I guess I can live with that, since it's the premise for the book.

• The vampires can be a bit too enigmatic. They don't want to turn Bella (main character) into a vampire, but they don't explain why. They say they don't want to do that to her, but they don't say why.

• EDIT: The relationship between the two main characters seemed a little abusive & creepy. Edward (the vampire) watches Bella sleep without her knowing it. They're both really jealous.

The bad, but didn't bother me:

• The love story is really an infatuation story. It's not clear why the two main characters like each other. One is really attractive, the other smells really good. That's about it. Didn't really bother me because I'm not the target audience.

• The main character behaves like a Leave It To Beaver girl. She's very domestic and not very empowered. This didn't bother me because that's how some people are.

The good:

• It's a quick, mindless read. Most of the book is action or dialogue. The boring descriptions (usually of how attractive the vampire is) can be skipped over without missing anything. This is the only bullet I have, but it's a pretty good bullet.

So, I definitely wouldn't recommend it and it's certainly overrated. But it wasn't extremely terrible, just bad.