[Warning: Contains spoilers]

An hour before Breaking Dawn’s release at midnight, over 100 teenage girls stood in line, eager to purchase the fourth novel in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series. Ranging from middle school students to recent Skyline graduates, girls filled the Issaquah Barnes & Noble on July 31 to be some of the first to read the final installment of the vampire quartet.

Reminiscent of the Harry Potter series, many bookstores planned a midnight release party for the book. Though not nearly as popular as J.K. Rowling’s magical septet, Twilight is recognizable by name for many teenage girls, some of whom were bent on reading Breaking Dawn late into the night.

The Twilight series is a romantic fantasy about the growing relationship between Bella Swan and the vampire Edward Cullen. Bella is a fragile human living in the town of Forks, Washington who becomes deeply involved in the supernatural world of vampires and werewolves.

The ending of the third novel left few clues as to the plot of Breaking Dawn, but is surprisingly structured, broken down into three sections. Stephenie Meyer also incorporates different narrators, as parts of the story are told by Bella while others are told by the werewolf Jacob Black.

Breaking Dawn marks a major turning point in Bella’s life as she gives up her normal life for a future with Edward. Bella starts a family and endures the trials of transitioning to immortality. Bella changes from being a high school student to a wife, a mother and powerful member of the Cullen family.

“It was more mature and different, but really good. It wasn’t what I expected,” said senior Mckenna Corlis.

The intensity of the modern-day love story comes to a fever pitch, as childbirth threatens Bella’s life. And in an interesting twist, the werewolf Jacob Black becomes the faithful protector of Bella’s daughter, Renesmee. Rather than being caught in the supernatural love triangle of Eclipse, the Cullen family is threatened by another coven of Italian vampires.

“I thought the ending was really stupid because they built it up to this huge, epic moment and it was anticlimactic to work everything out by talking. It was disappointing and open ended for the end of a series. And it was way too happy of an ending. Nobody died, everyone fell in love and lived happily ever after, almost like a Disney movie,” said senior Andrea Nishi.

Some readers were less angered by the series finale.

“The ending wasn’t what I expected to be, but it was a really intriguing fairly tale ending. As a whole [the books] are mind-blowingly amazing,” said Corlis.

Still, fans of Twilight eagerly anticipate the release of Twilight the movie, scheduled to be in theaters on December 12. Robert Pattinson, the actor who played Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, will play Edward Cullen in the film. In the future fans can also look forward to the publication of Midnight Sun, a retelling of the Twilight from Edward Cullen’s point of view rather than Bella’s.

“I’m excited to mock the movie. I’m not expecting it to be really good, because those things are never that great because they’ll cut out stuff to fit the length. It’ll be for a preteen audience. A lot of stuff goes on in the characters’ head so they’ll need either annoying narration or leave out a lot of parts,” said Nishi.

For more information, visit stepheniemeyer.com or twilightthemovie.com.