I guess if the books were written even half-competently I wouldn't have half the beef with them I do now. It's the combined frustration with poor storytelling and distaste of rabid, obsessive fandom that really irks me.
This.
Twilight, to me, is pretty much the ultimate example of
poor execution of an idea. (Though the Eragon movie comes in a close second. No, wait, that was worse...)
The thing that bugs me more than anything else, is that the book, "The Host", proves that Stephenie Meyer can actually write a good story. The Host is vastly far and above Twilight in every single way, yet most people, even a lot of Twilight fangirls, haven't even heard of it. And the premise for Twilight, while not by any stretch, genius, isn't really as stupid as people make it out to be. There are a lot of interesting elements and ideas in there that, in the right hands, could have made for a very interesting narrative.
So, why does the quadrilogy suck so much then?
Well, obviously, its very badly written. That's the most glaring flaw, but like it or not, her stunted prose is very, VERY easy to read. I wonder if this was accidental or actually done intentionally. SOMETHING has made these book spread through the tween and teenage population like wildfire, and the ease with which kids can actually get through the books probably has something to do with that.
Something else that only became apparent to me after I read The Host, and the released partial manuscript for Midnight Sun, is that in the Quadrilogy, Bella's point of view is very, very twisted, but this bizzare point of view was so poorly executed, that it brought the whole story down because it could only be seen through Bella's eyes. After reading Midnight Sun, it's clear that Meyer had a very clear picture of Bella as a character, and she is by no means meant to be a role-model, or even remotely sane or ordinary. Bella is more of a freak than Edward.
In my opinion, Twilight would have been a very, very different story if it had been written in the third-person, rather than from bella's perspective. Or even from any of the other character's perspectives. But it wasn't, so I guess we'll never know.