Vampires' most prevalent tastes are common knowledge. Blood. Chiaroscuro makeup. Gruesome sanguinary sex. Vampires, as a rule of thumb, should not be into high school, Volvos, or marriage pre-fornication. Or baseball.

I read Twilight on the recommendation of a friend. Almost before I knew it, I'd read all the sequels too. I found myself desperate – in a dispiriting, lacklustre way – to know whether Isabella Swan winds up a sexually fulfilled vampire vixen or carries on queening it as the squabbled-over totem of asbo-tastic werewolves and sparkly, long-toothed children of the night. I didn't know then that I'd have to read four increasingly brick-like books to find out.

What I most resent about the world of Twilight, apart from the perfectly good hours it's thieved from my precious, finite life, is the drawing of the vampire's teeth. The dismal heroine – a clumsy, selfish nincompoop with the charisma of a boiled potato – is left to make all the sexual running, while her demon lover persists in behaving like a perfect little gentleman, the chivalric hero of a bygone era. The Times's jacket review of Twilight comments that its "dreamy prose … encapsulates perfectly the teenage feeling of sexual tension." Pah! I remember the Point Horror series of my early teens, laced with nasty, frightening, illicit sexuality alongside supernatural visitation and yellow-eyed menace – cheap cover art made flesh. Tawdry and transgressive, you couldn't imagine any adult reading them. The Twilight books, by comparison, their unsubtle Mormon agenda presenting marriage as the ultimate glamorised teen rebellion, are like taking a long, over-scented bath in the kind of bathroom which contains a crinoline toilet-roll dolly and a fringed pink mat around the loo.

Bad, glamorous anti-heroes have been catnip to impressionable teens since the Brontes. From black-locked, dissolute Heathcliffs to violet-eyed Lestats, the bad boy – damned forever or still holding out the intriguing possibility of redemption – kicks the goody-goody's backside every time. Edward Cullen, the vampire hero of Twilight, has promising moments of sexy nastiness at first – "he turned slowly to glare at me – his face was absurdly handsome – with piercing, hate-filled eyes" – but then lets the side down with his über-conservative dress-sense: "He was removing a light beige leather jacket now; underneath he wore an ivory turtleneck sweater." NB, Ms Meyer – vampires should NEVER wear beige. The "vegetarian" vampires of the Twilight universe feed on bears and wolves, sparkle like a drag-queen's gusset when exposed to direct sunlight, and enjoy shopping for designer goods and giving one other thoughtful gifts. This is very, very wrong.

I recently reread Kate Thompson's Switchers trilogy, in which Tess, the teenage protagonist, is able to "switch" from one form to another until she reaches the age of 15. In the second book, Midnight's Choice, switchers are able to become vampires as well as rats, goats and chipmunks. Wahey! Thompson's vampires are bloodsuckers of the old school – selfish, vicious and predatory, and therefore appealing to the worst instincts of teenagers enraged by parental interference and nosiness. I love the banal humour of Tess's interaction with her concerned mother:

"If you don't get up soon you'll miss the daylight altogether!"
"What do I want with daylight?"
Tess's voice sounded slightly husky to her mother.
"Are you ill, sweetheart? Have you got a sore throat?"

Naughty Tess, a true adolescent, toys with the idea of making her parents her prey, relinquishing the daylit world and the tiresome routines of school, mealtimes and bedtime at a reasonable hour before deciding – somewhat reluctantly – in favour of good behaviour. By contrast, badly-drawn, incomprehensible Bella alternates between cooking and cleaning for her dad like a 50s housewife sans Valium, and leaving the poor schmo apoplectic with worried fury by swanning off for days to hang out with her vampire boyfriend or her werewolf cicisbeo. The lure of the forbidden – the strength and beauty which, once "turned", would allow her to wield extraordinary power over her nearest and dearest – is never so much as hinted at. She just wants to be a vampire so she can make out with her main man.

I'm not a fan of the Twilight books. In fact, I curse the demented determination to pursue a storyline to the bitter end which made me plough on, reading through yawns, to the end of Breaking Dawn. But the wretched things do generate a dreary, low-level addiction, like a toothache. Eventually the nagging throb drives you to Waterstone's – or preferably to a similarly afflicted friend's to borrow their copy, grudging the engorgement of Ms Meyer's coffers – for another dose of lo-cal piffle. Still suffering, I'll almost certainly go and see the film, my head bemused and at war with itself. But I won't enjoy it.