Twilight At 20: How Stephenie Meyer's Vampire Saga Changed Young Adult Fiction Forever

(MENAFN- The Conversation) Stephenie Meyer's debut novel, Twilight , was published in 2005 – the first in a series that went on to sell over 100 million copies worldwide . Twenty years, six novels and five movie adaptations later, it is clear that Twilight has permanently changed the shape of young adult (YA) fiction.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, most of the successful YA titles tended to be coming-of-age stories, such as The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (1999), that focused on regular teenagers learning how to become independent. However, the popularity of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series (1997-2007) and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy (1995-2000) primed a generation of readers for YA stories that embraced fantasy as a genre.

The stage was set for Twilight to emerge, combining YA romance and coming-of-age narratives with supernatural characters. Whereas Rowling and Pullman subordinated romance for adventure stories, Meyer made romance central to her plot, winning a vast readership among adolescent girls – and not a few adult women.

Following Twilight's success, similar books flooded the market, leading to a decade-long YA paranormal romance boom . Among many examples were L.J. Smith's series, originally published in the early 1990s but re-imagined in 2009 with new novels and a TV adaptation. And there was Richelle Mead's Vampire Academy series (2007-2010), which was subsequently adapted into a film (2014) and television series (2022).

Suddenly, sexy vampires were everywhere – to the joy of many YA readers, and the alarm of many critics.

This article is part of a mini-series marking 20 years since the publication of Stephenie Meyer's first Twilight novel.

During the years of its greatest popularity, from 2008-12, everyone seemed to have an opinion on the Twilight series, including journalists and academics .

While Twilight clearly struck a chord with its fans, it was widely critiqued in the media for what were perceived to be its regressive depictions of race and gender . Such critiques often combined feminist concerns over dangerous messages the series might convey to its readers with a reflexive scorn for romance media that lent into traditional gender roles – and for the women who enjoyed it.

Despite (or because of) its vast popularity, Twilight was dismissed by some as“bad literature” . Fans of the series became the butt of a joke, caricatured as impressionable illiterates who needed to be saved from their own bad taste – and their assumed inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality.

Consequently, many readers who devoured the books in their early teens distanced themselves from the franchise as they got older. They appeared keen to disavow any association with a series condemned as both aesthetically and ideologically worthless.

Twilight's impact on YA fiction

Not everyone liked Twilight, but its impact was such that no author writing YA fiction could afford to ignore it. Indeed, much 2010s YA fiction can be understood as a mass of Twilight rewritings.

In these books, the same elements repeatedly appear – supernatural boyfriends, love triangles, seemingly-normal-but-actually-special heroines – but rearranged by each author to provide whatever they felt Twilight didn't offer.

Even Meyer published two response novels to her original trilogy that addressed criticisms about their gender roles. Life and Death (2015) is a gender-swapped retelling of Twilight, featuring new characters, and Midnight Sun (2020) recounts the events of Twilight from vampire Edward Cullen's point of view. Meyer was, in essence, writing fan fiction of her own works.

Fans of the books at the premiere of the first Twilight film.

Much of the reader-response to Twilight emerged through fan fiction. Twilight is consistently one of the most popular fandoms: in August 2025, there were 13,067 fan fiction works based on the Twilight book series on Archive of Our Own , an open-source fan fiction archive. Some 1,814 of these works have been written or updated in 2025.

Famously, one such Twilight fan fiction – Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James – went on to become the fastest-selling novel in history on its release in 2011.

While the 2010s saw a reaction against Twilight, in the 2020s it has experienced a revival, as the books and (especially) films are being discovered by a new generation who interpret them as camp classics . As one modern Twilight fan on Reddit writes:

The YA publishing industry has also changed enormously. In 2005, the fact that Twilight openly courted an adolescent female readership made it a target for mockery. Today, that same demographic is the most coveted audience in publishing, and YA and“new adult” romances dominate the bestseller charts.

Modern YA fiction is far more diverse than it was in 2005, but there is still a clear line of descent from Twilight to the viral sensation A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas (2015), and to the modern romantasy genre.

Forks, the Washington town the books are set in, has become a site of pilgrimage for fans. Chris Haden/Shutterstock

Adult concerns over adolescent reading habits persist, and the critiques of 2020s romantasy as“fairy porn” closely mirror the attacks made on paranormal romance 20 years ago. But despite such criticism, modern YA fiction is to a great extent still the industry that Twilight created – one in which romance plots are foregrounded, female protagonists are the norm, and supernatural elements taken from the traditionally male-dominated genres of science fiction and fantasy are repurposed to tell stories by, for and about women.

Any comparison of the genre before and after Twilight makes clear how huge its influence has been. You might legitimately criticise Twilight's prose style, its gender politics or its handling of race, but after 20 years, there is no doubt as to the extent of its legacy.

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This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

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