Okay, I gave two stars to this book because I kind of hate everything it stands for, but the facts remains the I've read ALL THREE books in this series cover to cover, and always feel a prick of glee when I get my hands on the newest one. I'm not sure what their diabolical pull on me is, and figuring it out would require the kind of self-analysis that would turn up things I'm sure I'd rather not know about. Here's the lowdown: Stephenie Meyer's books are hardcore teen romances with fangs-and-fur window dressing. Not being the hugest fan of romance as a genre, I was hoping the vampires and werewolves would complicate the obsessive peregrenations of the heart that the series chronicles. Unfortunately, they don't. Does anyone read these books and actually not realize that getting bitten by a vampire is just a huge, chicken-poop metaphor for the giving of a young woman's virginity? I wish Stephenie had made her books thoughtful explorations of what it means to develop and experiment with your sexuality as a young person/feel torn between your vampire and your werewolf suitors/escape near death at the hands of bloodthirsty monsters, but she hasn't. For Bella Swan, everytime things get hot and heavy, her boyfriend calmly asks her to wait until he's bitten and transformed her so that he doesn't accidentally eat her during sex. Girls, what do we learn about sleeping with our young men from this story? Yuck. Also, although Bella is presented as a passably intelligent young person, she spends about 99.9% of her time thinking about how much she loves her sanguine paramour. I don't know about you, but while I was certainly very interested in sex and all its permutations when I was in high school, I was also interested in radical politics, bad hardcore bands, soft drugs and getting enough sleep before my stupid Zero Period PE class. Bella has no hobbies; she spends all of her time taking care of, being taken care of by, and thinking about the men in her life. This is not the kind of message I'd like to be sending to young women today; I know fantasy is fantasy, and sometimes it's nice to indulge your stupider ones, but three books-worth? Please. So I guess what I'm saying is that I read all these books so I can warn folks away from them in an informed manner....yeah, that's it. Here's my recommendation, since it won't fit in the intended field: I recommend this book to those who are capable of wading through pages and pages of bullcrap in pursuit of gem-like moments of unintentional hilarity.