Twilight

I liked Stephanie Meyer's Twilight a lot, and I think teenagers, especially girls, will enjoy this book. Though the book is a vampire story, it is more intensely romantic than it is scary or violent or overly sensual in the way Bram Stoker's Dracula was. The romance is patiently built; in fact the author's restraint in building it is masterful and is to a large degree what makes the book so intense. The only scary thing for me as a parent having my daughters read the story is that it takes a high school girl's romantic feelings for a guy she is still getting to know so seriously. Of course, that is realistic, and the book keeps pointing out the risk involved in such a total abandon (especially if the guy has an intense thirst for blood).
The plot of Twilight is well focused and rises to a great climax. The reader is led to change his point of view several times with some great reversals. The characters are all very round, and some of them are really likable people; there's a real sense that the author is enjoying telling you about them. I'm trying to say all this without revealing too much. The one annoying thing to me was that some of the lunchtime conversations seemed to rehash the same things over and over. A few times I felt like I would throw the book across the room if Edward chuckled sardonically to himself or said, "You should be running away from me. You don't know how dangerous I am," one more time. As a testimony to the book, I didn't throw it across the room when either thing did happen again; I kept reading.
Like the Harry Potter series, this series creates a fantasy in which our world is infused with fantastical elements. Meyer ties the story in nicely with previous vampire stories, accepting some aspects of the old stories and rejecting other aspects as legend, but giving a good reason for why the legendary aspects grew. At a particular point in the book, the characters even discuss how vampires might be a part of creation or the evolutionary process. It's all well thought out.