The Big Question I Always Get Asked

When I was in middle school, a very popular book that was released in 2005 about a human girl who was clumsy and fell down all the time and was in a relationship with her very controlling vampire boyfriend.


"Why don't you like that series?"

I get this question A LOT. It came back to me during this semester in children's literature for my MLIS course. We were given a list of books to read Harry Potter was on the list along with that very popular series at the time. I told my professor the issues I had with those books, and she encouraged me to write about that. She said talk about what you don't like about it. 

So when the reflection came, I had to give it a long thought, and it made me go back to middle school and high school.

This may give away my age, but when that book was published in 2005, I read it way before it was a best-seller and became a phenomenon, I was in middle school 7th grade to be exact. 

So as to why I preferred Harry Potter over that series

Simple 

I HATED Bella. Now I did like the other characters in the book, but I hated Bella. She was the most horrible character I had ever read. She was so weak, clumsy and spineless. I didn't think it was possible to get an urge to slap someone in the book and throw the book at the wall. I was horrified. My thoughts were is this something you want to teach young girls? To be a damsel in distress waiting for your boyfriend to save you? Edward was a control freak and a douche bag. I'm a Texan, if big daddy saw my boyfriend be like that around me, daddy would whip out his shotgun. 

Harry Potter had strong characters and good morals. Harry Potter was about being true to your friends and facing your fears. Twilight just seemed to point out that you're nothing unless you have a boyfriend. 

So the difference in Meyer and Rowling. It took Meyer four books to talk about the love story between Edward and Bella whereas Rowling summed it up in half a page.

Another difference was in the main female characters. For example in New Moon, when Edward left Bella,  Bella goes into a depression and isolates herself from the world. In Deathly Hallows, Hermione and Ron were starting their relationship. When Ron left Harry and Hermione, did Hermione go into a catatonic state? No, she stayed to help Harry and saved him during the snake attack. Pretty similar to Katniss in The Hunger Games, when the Capitol had Peeta, Katniss helped in the fight in District 13. 

So it goes to show the differences in the characters, but when the love interest left it did show the difference in the personalities. That is the main reason I dislike Twilight so much. I just felt Bella was horrible character for young girls.

I'll take the Vampire Academy over Twilight any day.