At the start of Twilight we see that 17 year old Bella Swan has moved to dreary, rainy Forks from bright, sunny Arizona. Mainly because she wanted her mother to have some time to move around with her new husband, Phil who travels a lot due to his profession as a baseball player. Bella's parents divorced when she was only six months old, her mother took her to live in Phoenix, Arizona. Bella does mention not fitting in well at her school in Phoenix and had few friends and no boyfriends.

At Forks High School, she is more sought after by some of the guys, however she sees pale skinned gorgeous Edward Cullen and an attraction develops. Although Bella feels her looks are average and nondescript Edward is also attracted to her. However, she is a 'singer' which means that the scent of her blood is particularly tantalizing to him, so although Edward does not drink human blood, he has an extremely difficult battle with himself to resist her and thus warns her throughout Twilight to keep away from him as he is a danger to her.

Bella is very perceptive and notices the many weird things about Edward that might escape someone less perceptive, Edward sometimes finds this a bit annoying. Even the colour of his eyes which change according to how 'hungry' he is, is noticed by Bella thus she mentions that she thinks he has contact lenses. Another thing that Edward finds strange is that his 'mind reading abilities' don't work on Bella so he never knows what she is thinking and finds this intriguing.

Despite the many difficulties of the human & vampire relationship they manage to fall in love and care very deeply for each other. Even when the sadistic tracker vampire James tricks Bella into being alone with him and then attacks her, indeed managing to bite and infect her with vampire venom, Edward makes the decision to save her and thus manages to exercise extreme control and suck the venom out of her bloodstream without killing her!

I invite more comments on what you think about Bella Swan and what characteristics you like or dislike about her, please leave your comments below.