Kristen Stewart as Bella and Robert Pattinson as the vampire Edward in Twilight
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Much has been made of these stories as abstinence parables for a new age; Edward would like nothing more than to sweep Bella off her feet, and she'd love to be swept, but anything beyond first base could cost her her life, if not her immortal soul. So he climbs into her window at night and holds her as she falls asleep, and protects her from the various other fiends who for reasons not worth explaining are looking to kill her. It's possible, as many commentators have suggested, that the chivalrous Edward is a teenage girl's dream date: not just sophisticated and powerful but tender and soulful, he's the 100-Year-Old Virgin, able to wait a century till he finds his soulmate, his conscience a constant chaperone that keeps things from getting out of hand. As my colleague Lev Grossman put it, "It's never quite clear whether Edward wants to sleep with Bella or rip her throat out or both, but he wants something, and he wants it bad, and you feel it all the more because he never gets it. That's the power of the Twilight books: they're squeaky, geeky clean on the surface, but right below it, they are absolutely, deliciously filthy."
But I suspect it takes more than that to account for OTD. I was reminded as I read that as you move through adolescence, your life gets so much bigger so fast; not just your hands and feet but your thoughts, temper, moods, doubts, and so all your relationships are vastly more complicated than in the days of playground tag. Melodrama comes so naturally: friendships dissolve into feuds, rivalries ripen, parents are useless, nothing goes according to plan, temptation is everywhere. These stories throw all that normal teenage drama into such high relief that the picture is suddenly clearer. The stakes in Edward and Bella's world really are life or death; if things go wrong, your heart could get broken — or your veins opened. Loyalty may require risking your life; betrayal could cost it. Self-restraint takes superhuman control. It's exhausting but cathartic to take one's own first experience of love or jealousy or loss and blow it up wide-screen, cue the music, roll the thunder.
I'll concede that there are times I wish Bella were a bit more Buffy, slaying vampires and not just falling for them. Edward's gallantry is noble, but you wish Bella didn't need to be saved all the time, that she were less clumsy or prone to fainting. But in these days of supergirls, when our daughters seem to be confident and competent in ways I couldn't have fathomed at 14, I'm not so worried about some embedded antifeminist message. I watched way more TV growing up than my kids do and read more junk and seem to have survived. Instead I'm grateful for any book that has girls so captivated that it will keep us talking late into the night, about relationships and their consequences, about roles and rights and trade-offs. About how you decide when there seem to be no good choices. About desire and discipline and where your values come from. There's plenty to argue over here, and they never get tired of talking about it.