Customer Reviews

The Twilight Companion: The Unauthorized Guide to the Series

5 star:		(69)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(79)

 

 

Lois H. Gresh claims to be a Twilight fan, but I was very shocked by the errors in her basic Twilight facts.

Some of the big ones are:

Chapter 1, paragraph one says "...Edward mix his blood with hers..." to change Bella when all Twilighters know it's venom.

She speaks about the constant fighting between the coven & the pack (even saying there was a "...huge fight of werewolf versus vampire..." at the wedding when it was Bella & Jacob arguing behind a tree and Seth & Edward separated them with an additional 2 vamp & 2 wolves looking on [pg 236]). Throughout all 4 books, I can only recall 2 physical scuffles between the 2 groups: 1 in Eclipse (Emmet & Paul) & 1 in New Dawn (Bella & Jacob).

She has Bella's age off by 11 months (pg 236) at the time of her wedding & she seems to think that Edward was not a virgin when he married Bella (pg 237) when Eclipse had quite alot of information stressing that he 'still has his virtue' and 'it's the one thing they have in common' regarding commandments they have or have not broken. In Breaking Dawn, he also touches on the fact he had NO IDEA what to expect regarding sex after they consummated their marriage on the island. Having no basis for reference from before he was changed.

I am sorry I spent the money on this, I wish I had waited for The Twilight Saga: The Official Guide. I am sure it will be worth the wait.

PLEASE, PLEASE, do not spend your money on this book! You will be sorely disappointed. Luckily, I didn't buy this book; I borrowed it from a co-worker. If I had actually bought it, I would have been even more upset than I am for wasting a few hours reading it.

This book isn't remotely close to a companion guide for the Twilight Saga. (The rest of the review will contain spoilers from the Twilight books, so don't read any farther if you haven't read the books.) Throughout the book, the author gives a rundown on typical vampires and werewolves. The characters in Twilight are not at all typical! This entire companion book is basically this: Even though the Cullen vampires don't sleep (or insert any "typical" vampire quality), if they did, this is what you would have to do if you were in love with a vampire...... The author also goes on and on about werewolves and how they are portrayed in movies and books and doesn't even acknowledge that Breaking Dawn revealed that the pack wasn't composed of werewolves, but that they were shape shifters. The author also tells you that if you want to have a vampire boyfriend, you'll need to put on white makeup everyday, but if you have a werewolf boyfriend, you need to have hair injections to have fur on your face. Also, make sure your vampire boyfriend wears sunscreen so he doesn't get skin cancer. The author also speaks very condescendingly about career driven women, scientists, doctors, nurses, and women and men during the labor process.

The book is maybe 25% about Twilight, and the other 75% is about other vampire and werewolf movies and books. The parts that do contain references to Twilight are riddled with errors. I think the error that caught me most off guard was where she said Edward could project his thoughts into Bella's mind. I guess she was referring to New Moon where Bella HALLUCINATED hearing Edward's voice, not Edward actually projecting his thoughts into her head. A few other errors.....Edward injected his venom blood into Bella (it's just venom), there was a vampire/werewolf fight at the wedding (there was an argument, not an actual fight), the only way Edward was going to turn Bella into a vampire was if her life was in danger (he had already agreed to change her after they were married), Bella tinkered with motorcycles (not Bella, Jacob did), Jacob's pack killed people (they protected people, no killing of humans, only vampires), Edward wasn't a virgin when he first made love to Bella (of course he was, did you skip that whole part in Eclipse?!), vampires don't have babies, even though in the very next chapter she mentions they have a child......there are others, but those are the ones that stood out.

If you want a childishly written book on typical vampires and werewolves, then this is definitely the book for you. However, if you want a true companion to the Twilight saga, wait for Stephenie's book to come out.

This book has very little to do with the books, they are included summary. It was a waste of time and money. It too many inaccuracies, and true Twilight fans will be notably disapointed. I was. The book mostly centered on old vampire movies and vague comparisons to the Twilight series.

I found this book incredibly offensive. Yes, I am one of those die hard Twilight fans. I've read all four books five times in the year that I've owned them. Maybe that's pathetic but it's true. My grandma, who is also a big fan of the books, bought this book and let me read it when she was done. It was complete garbage. As mentioned before, it is full of blatant mistakes which leads me to wonder if this woman even read the saga. All I did was skim through it. I found so many mistakes that I shut the cover and suggested donating it to the local public library. Nobody should actually pay money for this book and it somewhat angers me that this author has probably made a lot of money off the book just because it's associated with the Twilight series. Truely sad. I do not recommend this book to anyone.

I bought this book in the airport, for something to read. I am a HUGE fan of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series and I mistakenly thought I was picking up an official guide. This book is sooooo unbelievably bad, I actually had to put it down and walk away. I may have even tossed it in the trash to save other unsuspecting readers! I am not even certain that the author of this book has read the series, drawing "conclusions" about things the characters never said or did. Save your money....buy the Official guide when (and if ever) it comes out!!! Avoid this book for the same reasons vampires avoid werewolves!!! It stinks!

I just bought this the other day and started reading and right away i realized there was a lot of mistakes about certain things in the first 3 books .. what i do like is the little quizzes it has .. i'm waiting for Stephenie Meyer's Official guide to come out but too bad it got pushed back from December til 2009.

This book isn't the worst thing I've ever read, but it's an awful "companion" to Twilight. Lois H. Gresh writes more about what she's eating, where her children went to school, and Nosferatu than about Twilight (and whatever she does write about it is riddled with inaccuracies). Gresh's lame attempts at humor make the reader cringe. "According to folklore, unexorcised werewolves eventually turned into vampires. I'm tempted to tell a bad joke about werewolves who need more exorcise at the gym, but I'll spare you. Any joke I can possibly tell you about unexorcised werewolves is so bad that you would probably spit on this book and throw it on the floor, then stamp on it with both feet in hopes of exorcising the bad jokes" (p. 106). That's just one of a slew of idiotic comments that are meant to be funny. Ms. Gresh also seems to think that readers care more about what she's eating for lunch (grapes, according to page 43) than about Twilight. She seems to know a lot about other vampire and werewolf lore, but not much about Twilight itself. She claims multiple times that Edward can telepathically communicate with Bella and "project his thoughts" to her. She seems to be under the impression that Bella's middle name is Donna. She also says that there's a battle of some sort between the vampires and the werewolves. It's implied that the pack imprinting is a choice with the lines, "Perhaps the werewolf, Quil Ateara, isn't such a great guy. [...] He "imprints" with a two-year-old, which is not at all cool, and although he claims that he'll always protect her and be with her, it still doesn't make him a great guy" (p. 99). (The English-lover in me also wants to point out that she punctuated the appositive in the first sentence wrongly.)
All in all, if you really want to learn about Twilight, it won't be from this book. You'll learn plenty about Nosferatu, that's for sure. He's mentioned on just about every page that says the word "vampire," it seems. You'll also get crazy misinformation about the books. Gresh states that her book is from "one Twilight fan to another," but it seems like she's not much of a true fan... and who would buy a companion book for a series that the author isn't even a "real" fan of? I'm genuinely surprised by the fact that she's written 19 books, including fan guides to Artemis Fowl, Dragon Ball Z, His Dark Materials, Eragon, the Spiderwick Chronicles, and the Series of Unfortunate Events series. Were they all this bad and inaccurate? How does she keep getting these things published?
I would not advise any true fan to buy this book... she will be sorely disappointed.

This does talk about Edward and Bella. But it also talks about other vampires and compares Edward to other vampires in other movies and compares Bella to other chicks in magazines. My opinion; wait for the official guide if your really into the saga but it's really not going to add anything to the books that you haven't already read if you've read all four. If your craving more to the story this won't do anything to satiate that.

I am not sure this woman even read the twilight books! Some of her facts are wrong and there is nothing new in this book that you couldn't get out of just reading the series and looking on fan sites. Don't waste the money!

I thought the book would be more about the movies and the books.
Instead it was about the author's opinions on werewolves and vampires.
Bummer.....