lou's library

When I was twelve, I was obsessed with Twilight. Like, having-a-life-sized-Edward-cutout-in-my-room kind of obsessed. The Twilight series is what truly kickstarted my love for reading, and what got me into fantasy. In that sense, I owe a lot to those books. My obsession lasted until I was maybe fifteen, but it sort of faded out gradually until I reached a point where the books and movies still held a special place in my heart. At the same time, I was also embarrassed about my infatuation with Twilight (read: Edward Cullen 💘). Liking Twilight had never been cool, but as I got older I increasingly thought it was something to cringe about.

That being said, my main obsession before Twilight was High School Musical, so I guess you can tell I’d never been one of the cool kids. Looking back, that’s fine with me and I’m a little proud of how little I cared what others thought about my obsessions. I wore that Twilight shirt with pride and for that I applaud my teenage self. But I think that makes it even sadder I wasn’t able to uphold that pride later on in my teens and early twenties. Because I do truly believe that taking joy from myself for fear of otherwise being deemed uncool is a cruel thing to do to yourself.

And so, I’ve been trying to reclaim my teenage obsessions. High School Musical rewatches have been a somewhat regular occurrence for years now, but Twilight so far has been strangely off limits. I asked my sister (a fellow Edward girlie) if we could rewatch the movies and she said “I can’t, it’s just too cringe”. Now, I haven’t actually rewatched the movies yet so perhaps she will be right and we will cringe our way through it, but perhaps that’s okay. I’m not expecting it to hold up perfectly and do justice to how I remember the movies. For one thing, it’s not 2009 anymore. Also, I’m no longer twelve years old and so my thoughts and opinions are bound to have changed a bit (hopefully for the better but the jury is still out on that). But at the same time, those soundtracks were simply banging and the mood in those movies is a 10/10. I can’t wait for autumn to come because that is peak Twilight time!!

So maybe the Twilight series isn’t the most genius or well thought out or well written book series out there (that title might have to go to the hunger games trilogy), but it’s fun and that’s what matters when reading, no? I’m not saying the problematic aspects of it should be ignored (the representation of Native Americans in the series is something that has been critisised and that I want to learn more about!). I just think that it should be okay to like something that’s a little silly.

And, honestly, the books are way better than I thought they would be as an adult reading experience. I’ve been rereading them with my book bestie and we’ve been having the time of our lives! So many long-forgotten plot points, cringey but iconic sentences (and so the lion fell in love with the lamb 🔥) and revelations I did not see coming. The biggest one for me was that Jacob is actually the most sane person out of our beloved love triangle. Twelve year old me would NEVER have admitted this. But most of the time, he’s acting entirely reasonable, while Edward is off ruining everything by being too damn protective of Bella. Honestly, for a hot minute during New Moon I thought I was gonna have to switch sides to Team Jacob. I didn’t end up doing this because Edward got a grip on himself in Eclipse, but I no longer shake my head at Team Jacob fangirls and fanboys. I get it now!

And while I understand that the Twilight series isn’t exactly high brow, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Because let me tell you, these books are written well. You don’t wanna put them down. And I’m also just so sick of so called women’s literature being looked down upon. First of all, what is that even supposed to be? And why is it automatically taken less seriously because its target audience mainly consists of women? Life is too short to deny ourselves the pleasure of diving head first into fantastical worlds that are fun to spend time in.

So, yes, Twilight will perhaps always be a bit cringe. But I’m so here for my own personal reclamation of this book series and I don’t really care what anyone else thinks about it. The books once again inhabit a place of pride on my book shelves and I might just have to have a little search on Vinted for that Team Edward shirt.