This Will Sound Dumb...

Thanks to a couple girls entering my high school youth group this year, I spent the past week absorbed in a book series. About 3 weeks ago at our high school pool party, a couple of the girls were leaving early to go to one of those midnight book parties at Barnes and Noble. I started talking to them about the series and was shocked to find out this was actually the fourth and final book, as I had not heard of them before. I asked what it was about.
Mistake.
Maddie started telling me about how it was just a teenage love story but one of the main characters was a vampire. No, thank you, I told her. I don't do scary books anymore. She told me it wasn't scary because the author writes about them in a way that you can imagine they're real.
Um, that sounds pretty darn scary to me. I definitely don't want to think about my neighbors possibly being vampires. So I wished them a fun night and they were off, as memories of standing in lines to get Harry Potter books filled my head. We went to a couple of those bookstore parties with Randy and Deidra before then heading over to Meijer to get the cheaper copy.
Then out of nowhere over the next couple weeks I felt like everywhere I turned all I heard about was this "Twilight"series by Stephenie Meyer. Suddenly I felt this pull to the series. I had to read it. It bothered me that I was late in starting it - I mean, the last book was already out! (Although in the end it makes it much easier to read when you can fly through the entire story and move on to the next book without waiting another two years...kind of like renting a sesaon of "Lost" and not having to sit through commercials or months of one episode a week.)
Casually I asked Maddie if I could borrow the books. I read the first one in a day and, not able to wait the two days until I would see her to get the next one, I bought it at Meijer while grocery shopping that afternoon. She brought me the third and I devoured it only to have to wait a couple days for the last one until I saw her again.
I could not believe how hooked I was on these dumb books. And I say dumb because, yes, they are and yet there is something so addicting and captivating about them that you can't help but want the next one. Her writing is not outstanding but there is something there that hooks you. And I will confess:
I have never had a crush on a character in a book. Well, there are a couple Jane Austen characters that I wouldn't have minded running across a couple hundred years ago if they were real and I was alive, but overall I tend not to crush on characters. Edward is another story. Everytime Tim saw me reading the books, he would make a comment about my vampire boyfriend.
So all that ended as I finished the last book today, less than 24 hours after receiving it from Maddie. Yes, my children probably felt somewhat neglected in the past week at times. I was disappointed overall in the book. I am glad it had a happy ending, but it was kind of a letdown after the other ones. I want something exciting to end a series and this was not that. It is probably a good thing because I didn't finish the book thinking, 'Oh, I wish it would go on longer.' It was a good, clean break.
Now I have my final Karen Kingsbury book in the whole Redemption/Fame/Sunrise series coming out in September. That will make me cry. And I know that I will want her characters to go on. If you have not read any Karen Kingsbury books - you need to. Now. Pick any of them. Have a box of Kleenex handy. I have cried in every single one, including the children's book she wrote.
I don't know if I would recommend the "Twilight" series. If you want a quick (even though they look like large books, the font is big and the margins wide) and easy read, go for it. There were a couple things that irked me that I don't like the thought of all these teenage girls reading. There are never any explicit sex scenes - but the sexual tension is there and there is quite a bit of it. I don't want these girls thinking that once you're married, all you do is have sex all the time. Then they probably would all be jumping into marriage or just start having sex anyways. I guess it could be a good discussion starter.
On to the next book - "Pagan Christianity" by George Barna and Frank Viola. From fiction to non-, here I go. My guess is there won't be vampires in this one...