VETO: Twilight

Let's get one thing straight: The Twilight series is a piece of crap. No one should read it, and if they do, they should apologize profusely to us and themselves.

For those of us who prefer to keep our IQ points and haven't indulged in this syrupy saga of teenage angst, let me introduce you to the first paragraph of Twilight: "My mother drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down. It was seventy five degrees in Phoenix, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue. I was wearing my favorite shirt - sleeve-less, white eyelet lace; I was wearing it as a farewell gesture. My carry-on item was a parka."

OH MY GOD SAVE ME. I AM DYING OF MEDIOCRITY.

We're all for chic lit and beach reading (<3 to Sophie Kinsella and Bridget Jones), but not when it ends "And he leaned down to press his cold lips once more to my throat". What is this, soft core for Mormons??

The writing is terrible, the theme is overdone, and there are SO much better things to be reading.

In what we feel is our duty to humanity, your lovely Editrixes bring you something less popular and way more quality to feast your blood-hungry eyes on.

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindovist is a Swedish vampire novel that's not quite a vampire novel. In the sense that it has a real cast of characters and deals with complex themes, such as pedophilia, drugs, prostitution, and murder.

It's about the relationship between a 12-year-old boy, Oscar, and a child vampire, Eli, who moves in next door. The book isn't "horror" in the strictest sense; it's definitely unsettling, and there's blood, but it's sprinkled deliberately rather than splashed across the page for no good reason. You won't find the sparkles and cheesy teenage romance that Stephanie Meyer hones so expertly, but in its place you'll find a whole lot more.

Let's compare, shall we? The first paragraph of Lindovist's novel:

"Blackeburg. It makes you think of coconut-frosted cookies, maybe drugs. 'A respectable life.' You think subway station, suburb. Probably nothing else comes to mind. People must live there, just like they do in other places. That was why it was built, after all, so that people would have a place to live."

Ooh. Feel that desolation, that ironic undertone, that sense of impending scariness.

Disturbingly, when you search for it on Amazon, a Twilight book comes up.

Let the RIGHT one in, here.