By Stephenie Meyer. Little, Brown; 629 pp; $21.99; hardcover

Harry Potter is so last month. Keep up: there's a new megaseller in town, and her name is Isabella Swan. Yup, magic again, but similarities end there: Bella's not big on boarding-school gowns or swotting for herbology. No, she's more about cutting school and working on her motorbike. Either way, she's cool enough that local retailer Vancouver Kidsbooks sold 80 copies of Eclipse , the third book in the Twilight series, the day it hit the store. According to industry reports, the initial print run is a million copies.

But it wasn't popularity that propelled me through all 1,681 pages last week. Author Stephenie Meyer is an accomplished writer, enviably controlled in her descriptions and generous with dialogue. What's more, she seems to see keenly into teen girls' souls.

Eclipse , like Twilight (2005) and New Moon (2006) before it, is about Bella, who moved to the tiny town of Forks, Washington, for the start of Grade 11. It's not long before our trouble-magnet heroine has befriended not just the resident vampires but the warring werewolves from the First Nations reserve as well. By the time Eclipse picks up, she has fallen in love with impossibly beautiful vamp Edward, while harbouring strong feelings for (spoiler alert) family-friend-turned-wolf Jacob. What to do? Who to choose? And will she live to see graduation?

It's not giving everything away to say Bella's favourite books are Romeo and Juliet and Wuthering Heights , but before you dismiss this as fodder for the CosmoGIRL! set (it's doing brisk adult business too), ask yourself this: who hasn't had to choose between two paths? Who hasn't moved towns, changed friends, started anew? Who hasn't flirted with danger? Who hasn't lied for the greater good?

The Twilight series, like most vampire stories, is at heart a battle between controlling dark thoughts and feelings, and letting loose. Bella and Edward struggle to rein in their love and sexuality, while Bella tries to figure out how far she's willing to go as lover and monster. Yes, there are battles, blood, and even dismemberment, but Eclipse also has an element that explains why it will have no trouble selling out that first ginormous printing: it has soul.