New Moon (Twilight Saga) [Paperback]

I am in my late 30s and read Twilight because I had heard good things and the hype of the movie was good. I enjoyed it immensely and was drawn in by the love story and taken back to my high school days. I became a bit pathetic and moped around for a few days when I had finished the book...simply because I wanted to read more.

Wanting more and itching to read New Moon, I logged on to Amazon and read the reviews and became a little worried as so many people gave it mediocre to poor reviews. However, I decided just to buy it and read it and I am so glad I did.

I found that it is a much better written book than Twilight. It seemed like Stephenie Meyer actually THOUGHT about what she was writing this time, and didn't just throw stuff on the pages randomly.

The compaint other reviews had was the lack of Edward in the story. However, I did not find this a drawback in the least, it was necessary to keep the emotions running as strongly as they do in this book, and I found the storyline excellent. Please do not be put off by the negative reviews - this book is well worth the read.

Finished reading "New Moon", the second book from the Twilight saga. Again, I didn't hate it, it was slightly better than the first (mostly due to the fact that Edward was not in it the majority of the time), but it was still not very good.

Starting with Bella; what a boring, whining, self-centered, bland character she is! In the beginning, she's with her one true love, she should be happy, would it kill her to smile a little?
Then, (accident prone that she is) she manages to cut herself on paper, thus driving the Cullen family crazy over the smell of her blood.
Ok, this is where I get confused: I understand that Bella's blood has a unique appeal to Edward, but the "brothers" go to a school full of people, I guess that there are the occasional cuts and bruises, they should be able to restrain themselves, and if Jasper is such a loose cannon, how can he even attend school? And what really bugs me is that, just because of that stupid contrived incident, Edward decides to uproot the entire family and move out!
So Edward tells Bella he is leaving, I would imagine a scene like that would be entitled to a deep dialogue, but no. He says he's leaving because she is no good for him, and she accepts it as an obvious fact. What does this say about Bella? That she is a bit dense, and soooo unworthy of the love of such a "God-like creature" ---sigh--. So she doesn't even try to fight for her happiness. What a spineless girl! Such a great role model!

So, with Edward gone, her life means nothing.

I can understand entering an abyss of despair when losing the one person you loved above all else (although apart from his "smoldering beauty", I don't see any other good qualities about Edward). But what I don't understand, is how someone can simply, for months, ignore friends that try to help, and then proceed to consciously, selfishly use them. Like the scene with Jessica: Inviting her out, not because Bella actually likes her, but because her mindless chatter might be a distraction, then all but ditches the girl at the movies, then places her in a potentially dangerous situation, then simply forgets her the minute she's home. And then, doesn't understand how the girl won't forgive her??? Heck! It didn't happen to me, and I still can't forgive her, as if she even apologized in the first place!
What a good, upstanding person Bella is!
Along comes Jacob, this is the one character I truly liked and he really deserved better than to fall for Bella who is -yet again- using him to escape the void her life has become without Edward. Even though she seems to actually like him, what does this say of a girl who can't survive without a man by her side and decides to settle for a lesser love? The author tries to convey Bella's internal struggle, but really, there is none.
Bella realizes that when she gets into dangerous situations, she hallucinates and hears Edward telling her to stop, so she develops a "love" for extreme sports, like riding a motorcycle and crashing several times, and jumping of a cliff. Because of a misunderstanding, Edward believes she is dead and goes to Italy to provoke a powerful vampire family "The Volturi" (silly name) into killing him. How will he accomplish this? (I will quote this from another review because it is the best description) - "BY PUBLIC SPARKLING!!" Hilarious!

After a series of absurd events with the Volturi, we are, once again, very much aware of how truly selfish a callous Bella is, she witnesses a mass murder committed by vampires, and wonders if "it might be wrong to feel so happy". I would dare say it is a little bit wrong!
Back to Forks.
Charlie grounds her daughter and considers Edward a "persona non grata" she doesn't understand why her dad is being so pigheaded. Really? I wonder if I would have much love for the guy who dumped my daughter and left her in a mess.
There are two good emotional scenes and they are both of Jacob and Bella sayng goodbye. And all I thought was : "What a stupid stupid girl!"

So, not a good book overall, I have read soo much better, but at least I finished it quickly. That's one positive, I guess. It gets so boring at times that I manage to jump pages and it seems the story also moves faster.

Oh, yeah, by the way, Victoria is still trying to kill Bella, but it's such a ridiculous plotline it's hardly worth mentioning.

You can quibble all you want, but everyone takes something from a book. It's inevitable. What I took from it was that this was not a good book.

See, during the course of this book the-one-sans-self-esteem (hereafter to be known as Bella) enters a state of catatonia because her boyfriend leaves her. The same boyfriend of Twilight, vampire, Edward.

Yes, she does feel like her heart's been ripped out. We've all been there but the main point of this - we got over it.

Yes we cried and we ate lots of ice-cream and watched sad movies and listened to sad music but at the end of the day we had to get on with our life.

See, in my opinion, Meyer is trying to convince us that this one of the great romances that the heroine is so caught up about that she can't live without Edward and she shouldn't have to because it's the great romance.

This same great romance had two 'made-for-other' characters, wonderfully strong and oh! so dazzling God-like Adonis Edward, and poor little plain clumsy Bella affirm their love for each other within a couple of weeks of their meeting. They have no true conversations about opinions and world events and growth as a couple outside of talking about their love again and again and again (as one wonderful Internet article of whiich I forget the name of metioned).

Stephenie Meyer said that some normal girls don't deliver a round-house kick to a guy when threatened. Is that an-oh-so-subtle reference to the Buffy Summers of Buffy/and/Angel fame? The thing was the difference between these two was that when Angel tried to stalk Buffy she (although using violence) basically said 'Stalking isn't a really big turn on for girls.' (Bella's thrilled by it though) Buffy was devestated when Angel left (for her own good) and yet Buffy got over it, she saved the day, she got through it.

So how are we meant to truly believe this is a great love story when it doesn't feel real? It feels fake and contrived and truly quite unhealthy.