By Diana Tixier Herald
Stephenie Meyer is hot stuff!
Not only is she one of Time’s Most Influential 100 people she is the talk of book lovers everywhere. In the Most Read Books section of GoodReads this week, her books hold 3 of the top 5 spaces (the other two are Eat, Pray, Love and Water for Elephants.) The Host is number 1. When checking the same list for the month’s totals, Meyer’s The Host is still number 1, and Twilight is number 4. When looking at the all time list, Twilight is #10, coming in just after Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
On Shelfari Twilight is #5 in the books with most comments, #4 for books with most reviews, #5 for Most Favorite books (just after The Da Vinci Code), and Breaking Dawn, the next book in the Twilight series that isn’t even out yet, has 909 people listing it as their most wished for book. At Library Thing Twilight has the 6th most reviews.
Obviously, this author is a current phenomenon. But just to explain for anyone who has been on another planet for the last few years, Meyer’s Twilight series is a young adult vampire romance series enjoyed by teens and adults alike. So how do you find a reader something to hold them over until the next book?
One of the great things about our product Reader’s Advisor Online is that it looks beyond genre designations and subjects to provide great read-alikes that are determined by actual readers’ advisors rather than by some computer algorithm that matches words but not complex relationships. Reader’s Advisor Online is a great tool when a book crosses genre lines because books like this can be classified in all the genres in which they fit.
Because vampires have traditionally been the denizens of horror novels, it makes sense that lots of people would look for a book about vampires in the horror section. So Twilight is classified as teen speculative fiction, paranormal and horror, as well as a vampire story. But it is also very much a romance. Romance is a huge genre in teen fiction and these books fit into the alternate reality romance and the subdivision paranormal romance in our genre tree.
Another great feature of Reader’s Advisor Online is Related Reads. Because I had read Twilight and talked about it with teen readers, I came to the conclusion that readers liked it not only because of the vampire element, but also because it features a strong female protagonist, strong friendships, and a romance fraught with difficulties.
There are literally hundreds of teen books about vampires, but the appeal is often very different from book to book. For example The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod by Heather Brewer and Vampire High by Douglas Rees are long on humor and feature male protagonists, so readers who just want to read about vampires may enjoy them, but those who want the female protagonist and the romantic elements will be disappointed. Some vampire tales are truly horror and meant to terrify—not exactly what readers of Twilight are seeking. Scott Westerfeld is, like Stephenie Meyer, one of the most popular writers for teens today and his novel Peeps is about vampires, but his vampires are creepy, not sexy, and science plays a big role, throwing this book into the realm of science fiction rather than paranormal. Confusing isn’t it?
The related reads one finds when looking up Twilight in Reader’s Advisor Online are books that contain combinations of the above mentioned elements including the House of Night series and the Vampire Academy series. Both series feature female protagonists, romance, and vampires that are presented in a romantic rather than horrifying manner. Be sure to check out the Twilight series in Readers Advisor Online for more great read-alikes that will really appeal to the fans of Stephenie Meyer.
Because the related reads in RAO are done on a title by title basis, rather than author by author, the read-alikes for Meyer’s The Host in our product are quite different from those for the Twilight series, keying in on the appeals of this atypical science fiction tale of possession.
In short, finding great read-alikes is much more complicated than searching a topic such as vampires, and this is where RAO can shine. Give it a try. For a free trial subscription, click here.
