When I first learned that Stephanie Meyer, author of the #1 bestselling novel, Twilight, was LDS my blood chilled. “Is she active?” I asked in horror. Apparently.

“Well, how can an active member write a vampire story?” I asked. Don’t those two kind of conflict, like negative and positive blood?

No one could answer so I did what I’ve always done…my own research. I borrowed the book. Besides, if one of my teenagers brought it home, I wanted to know what lay beneath its pages before I let them lift the lid…er, cover.

Now, you must understand—I don’t like vampires. They scare me. From those melodramatic Bela Lugosi films to some pretty horrible dreams, the whole demonic aspect of vampires frightens me. So I timidly asked the book’s owner, “Is it scary?” I didn’t want to sleep with the lights on at the age of 46!

“No,” she said, “not at all.”

A bit more self-assured, I brought the book home.

From the first paragraph I was bitten. I devoured the book in a single day and thirsted for more. But my enjoyment of the novel was not without its inner conflicts. Good or bad, here are some of my thoughts.

First off, I hated the editing! It made it difficult in some places to follow the dialogue. Now, I understand that probably has more to do with the editors than the author but I found myself in several places having to count backward through the dialogue to figure out who was speaking! In some places I never could.

Second, at times Meyer wrote like a woman. Yes, I know she is a woman and the book is told through a female’s eyes, but you don’t want the woman writer in you to suddenly sneak out in your male characters. She had a 17-year-old male ‘skip’ and a tough vampire hero sit with his chin resting on two folded fists. Those incidents, and others, made me feel like she needs to pay a bit more attention to male body language. Tough guys don’t usually skip and strong men don’t sit in the two-fists-under-the-chin pose. Both of those behaviors are definitely more feminine in nature.

But I loved the scene in the car where Edward says ‘distract me’. The body language there, along with Bella’s response and Edward’s reaction were, in my opinion, perfect.

While some of her descriptions were basic, she also has some wonderful descriptions, including ‘buttery sunshine’ and more. She slipped humor into the book, too, unexpected and well-placed.

Twilight is clean YA reading. (Hurray!) She has no sex, either in real time or backstory. There are no characters nursing bitter hatred toward family or friends, and only one swear word. (I get so tired of YA novels being filled with over-the-top teenage angst, trauma and language.) In Twilight, both the teenage characters love, protect and stay loyal to their families despite obvious problems. And both families love their children. That was refreshingly nice. Even at school there are no ‘mean girl’ groups or bullying jocks. More writers need to follow Meyer's lead in that.

Having never read a vampire story before, I found the plot to be refreshing and unique. (Maybe it’s not, but I didn’t know that.) The tracker completely surprised me and I thoroughly enjoyed that dangerous addition to the plot.

Did I like the fact that the hero is a vampire, a creature associated with the occult and carnality–two things LDS members eschew? Well, therein lies my worst inner struggle. I know he has to be a vampire…it’s the whole story; and gratefully she stays away from all occult references, which I appreciated. What bothered me was that she succeeded in creating vampires who could be so drawing and heroic that you actually LIKE them! Something about glamorizing the darkness raises my concerns and I'm still not sure how I feel about the whole thing. In short, I disliked the vampire part precisely because I did like it, leaving me to question ever deeper whether such things should be glamorized.

Another inner conflict grew within me over the heroine’s rampant lies. At one point she even admits it is getting easier to lie. Do I like that moral weakness in the story? Not at all! Do I think it could have been handled differently? Yes.

As for the romance in the story, it is clean. Meyer brings the reader nicely to the edge but does not step beyond it. I never thought Bella was coming on to the vampire so much as she was under his influence and he knew it, causing him to break it off for her own protection. He cared for her enough to keep his distance when he thought it would be difficult for him to restrain. I liked that concern.

Did it bother me that the vampire curls up with Bella one night while she sleeps? Nope, because she did sleep. To me it was two people who couldn’t be together finding a way to stay together for just a little bit longer.

I did get tired of the same ‘heart-pounding’ phraseology over and over. Many of her ‘romantic’ scenes seemed to be almost cut-and-pasted from earlier scenes. They began to run together with the same descriptions, actions and wording and I actually started skipping over them. I wanted something different. I also thought the word 'perfect', in reference to the vampire, showed up too often. Despite the fact that he had the whole blood-drinking flaw, I wanted him to be a bit less perfect--to have an Achilles' Heel or something. Even among the vampires, he always outperformed everyone--perfectly.

But the fact that Meyer causes you to cheer for the vampire hero and you actually want to see them be together tells me she nailed the basic story. She kept it clean, she kept it moving.

If you choose to read it, remember this is not LDS fiction. It was never meant to be. Do not expect sermons, scriptures or spiritual experiences while lost in its pages. LDS fiction is designed to offer LDS characters and values and a dose of spiritual satisfaction. Mainstream fiction ignores or mocks those things. Without preaching or getting religious, Meyer manages to build a bridge between the two as quietly as she brings a vampire and a human together.

Whether or not you think that is a bridge you want to cross will be a personal decision left to you.

FINAL NOTE: After reading the entire trilogy I need to warn readers that the things I liked about the first novel change dramatically in the succeeding novels. Foul language abounds as well as redundant descriptions of the physique of two male protagonists, constant lying, and Bella curling up every night with either Edward or Jacob. In the third book the teenage heroine tries to manipulate the vampire into having premarital sex with her; and the few 'moral' discussions that appear in each book move about as smoothly across the page as an elephant in spandex. Obviously Meyer succumbed to the pressure to 'add more'.