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Stephenie Meyer's novels have interested many people over the past few years, and feature a lot of messages on love sexuality, class, race and cultural issues. This time around the characters in her books are discussed by lecturer Natalie Wilson using these themes of life, love and other cultural issues. Her interest is making this book happened when she was asked to do a series of talks at Summer School in Forks, where she decided to write an in-depth analysis of the books. She found they captured her imagination, and also gave out a message that at times could be seen as contradictory.

After starting out as one of those people who didn't like the novels, she found that after reading them again and again, she thought that they were more interesting than she was led to believe, and thought they needed to be given a chance. Natalie Wilson has given it a chance here as she analyses the main characters Edward and Bella, and the other minor characters.

In "Patriarchial Vampires, Submissive Females and Chaste Heterosexuality: The Conservative Functions of Vampire Narratives," she mentions that Twilight was the opposite of Dracula by Bram Stoker in that the cultures are different as are the times and so is the message Stephenie Meyer is trying to convey to her readers. Bella isn't as feminine a character as Mina was when readers first meet her. She acts a bit different, and comes across as more of a tomboy and doesn't have to have friends around her all the time to make her look good or feel secure.

This book is a must buy for those who are fans of the novels and the movies, but even for someone with little or no interest in them, it's still interesting. Fans will get as much enjoyment reading about the similarity between the characters from other popular novels as they would with other books of this kind.

Sandra Scholes likes reading about vampires so this was right up her street -- she also writes for some vampire websites and publications: Love Vampires, Vampire Reviews, and The Chronicles.