Critique: Twilight

I decided to pick up and read this book after hearing all the positive and negative opinions about it and decided I wanted to see for myself, hopefully learning something useful along the way.

As a reader:
I found the book to be pretty slow and uninteresting through the beginning; I wasn’t particularly interested in the main character or her day-to-day life. I became a little more interested near the later half of the book where I feel like it picked up significantly. There were strange parts where names were mentioned that weren’t mentioned before and other small things which were odd but weren’t too distracting.

As a writer:
I found unusual sentences that didn’t sound right, some issues with perspective, and typos. I noticed there were a lot of semicolons, which doesn’t really bother me but makes me wonder how many are too many for a novel.
The novel made me think about starting a story with action vs. starting slow and leading up to more, and the effects they both can have over readers. When I do more reading I plan on looking into it further.

Not a particularly comprehensive critique, but it’s a learning experience for me.