Review: THE TWILIGHT SAGA: THE OFFICIAL ILLUSTRATED GUIDE by Stephenie Meyer

Rating: 4/5 stars

After finishing and loving the Twilight series, I discovered this book's existence and had to check it out immediately. Honestly, this is one of the best series companions I've ever seen; it is very comprehensive.

We start with a question and answer session between Stephenie Meyer and fellow author Shannon Hale. This was fun and easy to read, and we learn a lot about what went on in Stephenie's head while writing the Twilight saga, and how the story turned from a dream to a novel to a movie in such a short amount of time.

Next, the book is divided into sections: vampires, werewolves, and humans. Each section goes into great detail about that species as a whole and then breaks it down by coven/family. We get to read about each and every character in the entire series, even ones that were just mentioned in passing. For each person, we find out some raw facts plus a story of their personal history and their most famous quotations. This section basically tells you everything you wanted to know about everyone. There are even beautiful illustrated photos of all the main characters, plus photos of different locations and items from the series.

a picture of human Bella from the book

After that, there's a section that includes all the vehicles from the series and includes a photo of each one. Following that are pages and pages of timelines and key plot points throughout the whole series. (If you ever wanted to reread all four books in one day and get only the important information and skip the non-essential stuff, the key plot points section is the thing to read.) Then there are tons of fan drawings and international covers for the books (I loved looking at these visual sections). Next is a playlist of songs that inspired Stephenie while writing, and it includes the corresponding scene that matches each song. The book concludes with outtakes from the series and frequently asked questions.

I learned so much about the Twilight universe that wasn't covered in the books or was only hinted at. There are so many details and background stories and new facts contained in this illustrated guide. This book truly does complete the puzzle, and I would 100% recommend it to any hardcore Twilight fan; it's a must-have.