Twilight: To Hate or Not to Hate?

Hey everybody! Amy again. 🙂 Before I start on this topic, I want to make it clear that this is a DISCUSSION post, not a review! To read this, you don’t have to be in love with Twilight or otherwise. You don’t have to have read it, not at all! I personally HAVE read Twlight, but for the purposes of this post, I won’t be sharing my thoughts on it at this time. Second of all, you are in no way inclined to agree with me, nor should you. (Although if you don’t, I’d be very curious as to what your opinion on this topic is!) This is simply my observances. As I said, a topic to discuss. (Hopefully we can get a pretty good conversation going in the comments!) Alright, let’s get started!

Twlight: To Hate Or Not To Hate? That is the question, now isn’t it? Alright, now how many of you like Twilight? (I’m curious, tell me down in the comments) Hate it? (Tell me that too!) Okay, I’m just going to say (as a fact): I believe that most people either absolutely hate or absolutely love Twilight. I also believe that most people think Twilight is “not a good book”, a “lesser” book, not “quality” writing, etc. etc. Now let’s look at some facts. On Goodreads, the average rating is 3.56 stars. If you hover over the stars on Goodreads, 3 is “liked it” and 4 is “really liked it”. So, overall, people err on the side of liking it quite a bit. Goodreads also offers rating details. Guess what? 34% 5 star ratings, 22% 4 star ratings, 20% 3 star ratings, 11% 2 star ratings, and 11% 1 star ratings (although about 30000 more 1 star than 2). So where does that put us? Clearly, people hating it (which often seems overpowering) is in the minority. What’s your point, Amy? Just bear with me here- let’s look at another couple of popular romances YAs with a “reputation” to see how Twilight compares. Fallen: 34% 5 star, 26% 4 star, 22% 3 star, 10 % 2 star, and 5% 1 star. The Heir: 32% 5 star, 34% 4 star, 23% 3 star, 6% 2 star, and 2% 1 star. As you can see, Fallen is extremely similar, and The Heir is fairly close as well. However, no one (for the most part) looks at them as “taboo”, do they? Twilight just happens to have a reputation, and for what? What makes Twilight any different than those others?

I don’t have any statistics for it, but as far as I can see, Twilight was originally received very well before the bad reviews became more prominent. But isn’t that the same with every book? I mean, sure, Twilight is that kind of romance, but this is quite clear from the blurb. If you read Twilight, you need to be expecting a romance, because that is what it is classified as, and therefore, that is what it contains. Although there are action scenes in the book, it is still mainly romance, and the whole thing is centered around that (obviously). You don’t like that the vampires sparkle? Hmmm… What about all the other books? Don’t you dislike things in those as well? What about Allegiant? Hardly anyone likes that ending.

I guess my point is just that I’m opposed to hating the IDEA of Twilight. I have no problem with people who don’t like romance and/or YA and therefore believe Twilight is not for them. Furthermore, I understand if you attempted to read Twilight and it just wasn’t your favorite, for whatever reason. But I don’t appreciate hearing people say things like, “Oh, it’s Twilight. Better avoid it.” or “OMG YOU’VE READ TWILIGHT!!!???!!! WHY???” You could do the same to Colleen Hoover’s books, or The Fault in Our Stars, or Fallen, or The Heir… Anything, really.

To conclude this short little post, I want to again repeat that this in no way has anything to do with whether I liked the book or not. It’s merely an observation that I thought would be an interesting discussion topic. (Also, I’m aware that I missed my Shoutout Sunday, but I figured that since I just did one, I should let it fly for this week. Hope you don’t mind. 🙂 Plus, the page for my Reading Challenges is now up! Go check it out here!) Let me know what you think!

Have you read Twilight? If so, how much did you like it? If not, do you plan to? Why or why not? Do you agree with me on this topic? Do you have more to add to what I said? If you don’t agree, I’m curious to hear why! Tell me about it. Did you enjoy reading this post? Would you like to see more like it? Did you like my edit? HUGS FOR ALL!!! Say hi in those comments there. Just scroll a little bit… There you go! 🙂 Hope your Mondays weren’t too bad!