Oy. Vey.

The Twilight phenomenon seemingly came out of nowhere. One day, there were a million Facebook bumper stickers worshipping a mysterious Edward Cullen, and the world hasn’t looked back since. And really, what’s not to love? Edward Cullen is perfect. He is the boy that every girl wants, and every boy wants to kill. He is loyal and intelligent, with a spark of sarcasm and a dark secret. And he loves with abandon, without guard, reserve or arrogance. He loves wholly and completely and would stop at nothing to make the love of his life happy. And he’s a vampire, if you’re in to that sort of thing…

Of course, Edward Cullen is not the only reason to read the Twilight books, though he is certainly reason enough. In addition to a love that rivals the great epic loves of history, there are battles, super powers, evil, blood, and snarky teenage werewolves. Though the series cannot, by any means, be called Shakespeare no matter how well Bella and Edward’s love rivals that of Romeo and Juliet, it has depth. Twilight is a series about choices. Bella, a human, falls in love with a vampire, Edward, whose instinct is nothing more than to kill her, no matter how much he loves her. Waiting in the wings is Jacob Black, a shape-shifting werewolf from a Native American tribe who exists to stop vampires, and who loves Bella and who can give her a human life. She has to choose between them. She has to choose what she will give up to be with Edward. Their story is messy and complicated and real. Stephenie Meyer does a beautiful job exploring this, showing the complexities and unbelievable challenges that they will face.

So imagine our surprise when we read Breaking Dawn, the final installment in the Twilight series, and we find that Bella does not have to make any choices. She does not have to choose to become a vampire. She does not have to choose to give up her family. She does not have to choose to give up Jacob Black. She does not have to choose to give up even the ability to have children. She loses nothing. She makes no choices. Stephenie Meyer gave us an empty cardboard box for a final installment, filled with two dimensional characters defined by nothing but their ability to lament circumstances. There is no creativity, no allusion to the differences of Bella and Edward’s relationship, in Bella’s pregnancy or in Jacob’s imprinting on her baby. It was a cheap attempt to give every character what they wanted. Jacob’s imprinting was probably the worst because it ripped from us the last bit of truth and beauty – the inexorable intertwining of his overwhelming love for Bella and the indescribable pain that she causes him.

Stephenie Meyer killed her own story. She turned a beautiful, complicated, messy and inspiring love story into a self-satisfying, empty, spineless piece of nonsense, proving that her first three books were good in spite of her, not because of her. They were not of the highest quality literature, not by any definition, but they had something to say, and they said it well – not only as entertainment, but as the kind of book that gets under your skin and makes you think. But that was obviously not the point, so we, feeling used and betrayed, must condemn Breaking Dawn to the realm of things that do not exist. We have lost all respect for Stephenie Meyer – her first three books are now shaded and touched by the series’ cowardly ending. She has been brought to light as someone who is not an author. Authors understand that stories write themselves. Characters, once created, are not clay to mold. They might as well be living, breathing people for all the ability that we have to change them. It is almost as if we, authors, can only write what has already happened. But Stephenie Meyer changed the ending, and in doing so she took something from her characters, twisting them into mere shadows of themselves. We just have to be sure we don’t let her take the original story from us as well. Let Breaking Dawn go.