Yes, I did like The Host

After waiting 30 years for my turn for the copy from the library, I burned through the 600+ pages of Stephenie Meyer's "The Host" in a weekend. Yes, I thought it started slow. Yes, I know some people could not get into it. Yes, I agree that the relationships aren't as captivating as those in her Twilight series, but I still think about the characters. No Carrie, I did not think it was predictable. Yes, I really liked it.

How does she do it? How is she able to put characters in completely unrealistic situations and make you believe it could happen?...and I'm not just talking about the sci-fi aspect of the story. It's the relationships. I like how she explores questions in all of her books such as "what is the nature of our soul?" "what does it mean to be a human?" "how much of our human existence is tied to the way we love others?" "how much of our human experience is based in our emotions?" "how do our emotions, our physical desires, and our spirits interrelate?" And frankly, her questions of how unmarried physical desire needs to be harnessed so as to not harm the soul, how we might restrain that physical desire if we realized our body was not our own, and her imagery of the fire of passion make me think of 1 Corinthians 6:18-20 and Of Souls, Symbols, and Sacraments by Jeffrey R. Holland.

Now, again, how does she do it? How does she burn out 5 Bestselling huge and interesting stories in 4 years, tour the world, help make the movie, oh yeah, and be a wife and raise 3 young children? Does this woman sleep? How clean are her bathrooms? Of course I suppose she probably can hire help for the bathrooms. Last year I went with our RS Book Group to one of her book signings for "Eclipse" (which, by the way, I didn't love because I was too uncomfortable with the "will they/won't they" walking the line bit). We were definitely the statistical outliers surrounded by over 100 teen girls. But it was so exciting to see her face to face and I've got to admit that when she took one of my questions it was one of the coolest experiences in my life to be able to say I spoke with Stephenie Meyer!