Twilight: Audiobook

Fri, 09/12/2008 - 12:01pm by Cherie Lee

You may have noticed the buzz when Stephenie Meyer's fourth book in the Twilight series, Breaking Dawn, just came out this August or when the Twilight film grabbed Harry Potter's original release date of November 21st (it's not Twilight's fault, don't get mad at them). All this publicity also means that the original Twilight novel is still in hot demand here at the library. But if you're like me and you enjoy audiobooks, then there's a significantly shorter holds list on the Twilight audiobook.

As for the story and audio themselves, for any who've managed to avoid the media, Twilight is a vampire teen romance novel. For personal reasons Bella Swan (the name kinda makes me think of a certain Pirates of the Caribbean character) arrives in the small town of Forks to live with her father. Used to the warmth and sun of Arizona, Bella languishes in the dreary gloom of Washington state until she meets a strange boy at school...

The audio begins with some appropriately dark guitar music and the reader, Ilyana Kadushin, does subtle but fitting voices and manages to make most of the more dubious lines not sound too over-the top. Admittedly, the music initially made me fear all the worst things I'd assumed about the book were true, that it was just a modern day teen gothic romance. And in many ways it is. But I was reassured by Meyer's generally straight-forward description of events at the beginning and relieved to find a lot less teen angst than I'd expected. Although, Meyer is overly flowery when describing the love affair, and I thought the reasons behind the love were a little weak. But it's still a good exciting book for a rainy day if you don't mind cheesy romance.