Before I'm judged too harshly:
In exchange for someone (whose identity I will protect to preserve their reputation) reading the Mistborn trilogy, which impressed the wife and editor of the deceased author of The Wheel of Time enough to ask Brandon Sanderson to complete arguably the most renowned high fantasy saga of all time, I read... the Twilight series.
Sounds fair, right?
Anyways, some background about Twilight:
Bella Swan, 17, moves from Phoenix, AZ, where she lived with her mom to the dreary forest town of Forks, WA to live with her dopey dad.
She starts high school and immediately is attracted to a grumpy 104 year old man. They start an intense physical relationship where he repeatedly tells her to stay away from him because he might kill her.
Wait, that sounds gross. Why would anyone read that? My bad, I forgot to mention the 104 year old is stuck in the body of a 17 year old and he's hot.
Phew, so much better. But wait it's still kinda gross that an old man's mind is dating a 17 year old.
Whoops, I forgot to mention that he hasn't matured emotionally in 87 years, so he has the emotional maturity of a 17 year old.
Alright, now we're talking.
So she starts high school and is immediately attracted to a dude who grits his teeth and balls his fists in rage when she sits next to him in Biology because he wants to eat her, but that's ok because he has "the face of Adonis", big pecs and looks like a model.
This is Edward Cullen, who is actually a mind-reading vampire.
Well, the only person whose mind he can't read is Bella, who is also the best-smelling human he's ever encountered.
(Kind of a fishy coincidence, but ok.)
They fall in love in a few days despite not having a single meaningful conversation about world views or knowing anything significant about the other's excuse for a personality.
Meyer's idea of a couple getting to know each other in a nontrivial way include asking questions like:
"When's your birthday?"
"Did you have any boyfriends before you met me?"
"What's your favorite food?"
"Do you think a vampire's ability to live a fufilling life has expanded or decreased over the past 100 years?"
Just kidding about the last one. Can't make things too complicated, obviously.
But seriously, Bella asks stupid questions. They're VAMPIRES. There are so many interesting things to ask.
Social ones like the above, or: "How has your immortality and ability to read minds affected your views on human nature over the decades?" Or maybe a more scientific question:
"You once said a vampire can indefinitely subsist without any food or air. That's pretty incredible. Has Carlyle conducted any research on the anatomy of vampires and gained any insight on these mechanisms?"
or
"You're all pretty young. Is there a bias for only creating young vampires? You said yourself that you'd be hesitant to take away the opportunities that a human life uniquely has. So why not create vampires from seniors whose life has all but ran its course?"
Edward is also a terrible boyfriend. He doesn't respect Bella's opinions, manhandles her at every opportunity, and forces her to the prom without telling her knowing full well she gets anxiety from dancing and has the gaul to say it's for her.
Stephanie Meyer is also an abysmal writer. The most glaring issue I had was with her repetitive descriptions and conversational tools.
By a fourth of the way in I was convinced if I had to hear about Edward's yellow, golden, topaz, butterscotch eyes one more time I would lose my mind.
She utilizes the tool of changing an attitude shift in someone by their facial/vocal contortions ad nauseam (it's weird spelling that correctly-- if you know, you know) to compensate for her inability to convey conversational moods through words alone.
By this I mean Meyer liberally uses phrases like "his lips twitched, his face grew hard, his tone grew calm, his eyes became serious, he softened, etc."
It's fine to embellish a conversation's atmosphere by giving the reader visual cues, but if the mood of each conversation would be lost without them, that's just poor storytelling.
And that's what the book was full of.
Should you read it?
No.