Last Friday at midnight, thousands of teenage girls lined up at bookstores all over the country to get a copy of Breaking Dawn, the much anticipated fourth and last novel in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series. In the months leading up to the midnight festivities, Ms. Meyer was dubbed the new J.K. Rowling by Time magazine and USA Today and made countless appearances to feed the frenzy among her adoring public. The book’s publisher, Little, Brown, did a startling first print run of 3.2 million copies. A four-city Breaking Dawn concert tour starring Ms. Meyer and Justin Furstenfeld of the band Blue October — whose music inspired some of Ms. Meyer’s storytelling — launched in New York on Friday at 7 p.m. (and was simulcast by Entertainment Weekly). The first Twilight movie will come out in December.
But what exactly does Stephenie Meyer, a young, Mormon mother of three, offer that has girls everywhere swooning? And their moms, too?
