Wednesday, October 23, 2013

NIGHTLIGHT - A Parody

NIGHTLIGHT - A Parody




Nightlight has all the aspects of Twillight - the brooding teen aged clutz, the vampire love affair that stretches page after page, even a Bella and and Edward, er sorry a Belle and an Edwart, but, close enough right...well, not close enough to infringe on copyrights and be sued of course.
As with any good Parody, Nightlight roughly follows the story of Twilight, highlighting the ridiculous parts and shining a critical light on the book that captured the spotlight in, and around, 2006/2007 .
Right from the start the character flaws of Belle are exaggerated to such an extreme that is seems unrealistic; the setting is mocked with ease; and the supporting characters are written with that little bit of extra hot sauce that gives it a kick...showing the lack of 'kick' the original Twilight had. Not that making a joke or two about Twilight is that hard - 'I think my boyfriend may be a vampire', nuff said.
Sadly, the amount of pleasure and laughter I experienced reading Nightlight really only proved one thing. That I had my own deep dark secret...and it wasn't that my boyfriend was a vampire...no, it was that I read, had watch, and had somewhat enjoyed Twilight. That's the thing about parodies, you need to know the original in order to laugh at the jokes. Fine, my secret is out there - I'm a Twilighter (or whatever they are called nowadays, A Breaking Dawner? A Newish Mooner?)
But, to make it sound a little better, at least to my ears and self respect, I didn't actually read, er, finish the book. I've only watched the movies. All of them. Multiple times. But, I hated the book. Twilight, the book form I will reiterate, was a long drawn out romance. Not my thing. But, Twilight the movie was full of half shirted action heroes, doing actiony things like climbing trees and fighting evil. That works for me.
Nightlight starts out exactly like Twilight with Belle leaving her mother to go live in a rainy village in Oregon that is too small to be on a real map. She lives in her old bedroom with her absentminded dad and goes to highschool. Many similar things happen, she meets Edwart in biology class, she is almost hit by a car, she Googles info about vampires. From there things take a bit of a twist. Belle and Edwart's love affair fizzles out when she discovers he is not a vampire. Instead there are real vampires out there trying to bite her. It gets a bit crazy from there, but, still remains funny and entertaining.
The characters are slightly different as well, which makes for some good laughs. Belle is completely self obsessed and has the ego of Donald Trump. While Edwart is a pale faced computer nerd who has no self confidence at all. The Dad is almost exactly the same, which is hilarious. And, there is no real 'Jacob' character. So, if you are a Team Jacob type of person you may be slightly peeved if you read this book. Thank goodness I'm all for Team Edward.

RATING : READ

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