She Did It...

This pains me to say. It is like giving a doctor permission to cut off your infected leg. So, I will rip this band aid off as quickly as I can.

I now move Dean Koontz down a notch on my top favorite authors list. He takes the number 2 spot and is being replaced by Stephenie Meyer. I am sorry Mr. Koontz. You know I love you and always will but, Stephenie has captured something in my heart that is so lasting that it transcends all else...even my un-dying devotion to you!

I finished The Host last week...it seems so long ago that I can't even remember which day it was. If I believed in spells, I would think that she managed to cast a spell on all of her writing so that, as a person read her words, they would suddenly find themselves spell-bound. That is the only way I can explain how I feel about all that Stephenie Meyer has written. As much as I have a hard time letting go of the characters in her books, and moving on to read about someone else in another book whose adventures are sure to grip me, I struggle to even put Stephenie Meyer's books in my bookshelf. And, I mean that literally. After each of her 4 books that I finished reading, I couldn't force myself, before I was ready, to pick the book back up and put it in my bookshelf in my library. I wanted it around me. I was sad when those books were done. And, to have them around me seemed to comfort me somehow. So, each one would sit for about 5 or 6 days after I finished reading them, on my couch, next to where I like to park it for the evening. The characters in Stephenie Meyer's books feel like relatives or lovers to me. They feel like people that I depend on, who depend on me. I depend on them to get through their dangers unscathed, and they depend of me to get them through their dangers in a timely fashion.

The Host was just another example of Stephenie Meyer's genius! She has such a gift for weaving romance and danger into a perfect marriage that keeps me glued to her every word. I cried and laughed. I mourned and grew elated! There is no one that has gripped me so intensely through their writing. I can usually just move on. The characters in the books that I have read in the past have brought about emotion, devotion and concern but, not like the characters Stephenie Meyer writes to life. They stick in my head and in my heart and I think of them throughout my days. I hope for more from The Host. I don't see how Stephenie could carry that story further but, I would love to see how, should she decide that she can't let those characters go any better than I can.

She is truly a gem as far as authors go. He writing is beautiful, shiny, eye-catching, polished and priceless.