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The Twilight Saga #4
Breaking Dawn
When you loved the one who was killing you, it left you no options. How could you run, how could you fight, when doing so would hurt that beloved one? If your life was all you had to give, how could you not give it? If it was someone you truly loved?
To be irrevocably in love with a vampire is both fantasy and nightmare woven into a dangerously heightened reality for Bella Swan. Pulled in one direction by her intense passion for Edward Cullen, and in another by her profound connection to werewolf Jacob Black, a tumultuous year of temptation, loss, and strife have led her to the ultimate turning point. Her imminent choice to either join the dark but seductive world of immortals or to pursue a fully human life has become the thread from which the fates of two tribes hangs.
Now that Bella has made her decision, a startling chain of unprecedented events is about to unfold with potentially devastating, and unfathomable, consequences. Just when the frayed strands of Bella's life--first discovered in Twilight, then scattered and torn in New Moon and Eclipse--seem ready to heal and knit together, could they be destroyed... forever?
The astonishing, breathlessly anticipated conclusion to the Twilight Saga, Breaking Dawn illuminates the secrets and mysteries of this spellbinding romantic epic that has entranced millions.
491 pages, ebook
First published August 2, 2008
18142 people are currently reading
299284 people want to read
About the author
Stephenie Meyer
85 books80.7k followersStephenie Meyer is the author of the bestselling Twilight series, The Host, and The Chemist. Twilight was one of 2005's most talked about novels and within weeks of its release the book debuted at #5 on The New York Times bestseller list. Among its many accolades, Twilight was named an "ALA Top Ten Books for Young Adults," an Amazon.com "Best Book of the Decade So Far," and a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year.
Meyer graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in English Literature. She lives in Arizona with her husband and three sons.
Meyer graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in English Literature. She lives in Arizona with her husband and three sons.
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August 4, 2008
If you loved Breaking Dawn and don’t want to see it criticized, I’ll warn you now not to read my review. That being said, let me begin by saying that when I first read Twilight, I was hooked. I read New Moon in one sitting. I awaited the release of Eclipse with great anticipation. Sadly, Eclipse was the beginning of the end. It left me disappointed enough not to have high expectations for Breaking Dawn. Even at that, Breaking Dawn shattered my lowest expectations. I am stunned at the depths to which this once-revered author has plunged! From this point on I will refer to Breaking Dawn as B.D., aka “Bitter Disappointment,” or, if you prefer, “Boring Depravity,” “Bloody Drama,” “Brain Drain,” or my husband’s personal favorite, “Bloody Diapers”.
Where do I begin? How about with my least favorite character, Bella? She began the series with a lot of promise. Sure, some people said that she wasn’t well defined in the first book, but I never had a problem with her. Throughout New Moon and Eclipse, her character starts to decline. In B.D., Bella becomes intolerable. This girl is unbelievably selfish. She begins the book whining about the beautiful, expensive car Edward bought her. She whines about the wedding preparations, the dress, the ring. Poor thing has to *gasp* marry the man of her dreams! The injustice! She is far more concerned about nameless, faceless people mocking her for getting married young than she is about the happiness of the man she claims to love more than life itself. And her treatment of Jacob! Where to begin? This is a good kid had the misfortune to fall in love with her and though I had issues with his manipulation of her emotions at the end of Eclipse, still, he’s a teenage guy and you have to cut him some slack. But come on, Bella! Once she realizes she loves him, but that she loves Edward more, she chooses Edward. Fine. So let the poor guy go! Let him move on with his life! But no, she has to have her cake and eat it too. She hurts both Edward, the one she has chosen, and Jacob, the one she has rejected, by refusing to cut ties with him. She claims to hate herself for hurting him, says at one point that it’s “criminal” to injure him as much as she does, but will she love him enough to let him let go and move on? Nope. She wouldn’t “feel whole” without him, so she continues to cling to him. Even after she’s married. The culmination of this extreme selfish lack of consideration for anyone’s feelings but her own is when she slips and refers to the unborn baby as “EJ”. Did she even think to consider whether Edward would be happy about having his child named after his rival? No, she just did what she darn well wanted to do, and gave no thought to what Edward would want. Bella has become a tyrant. What Queen Bella wants, Queen Bella must have.
Now, a little bit about Edward. He was what made Twilight so magical. He was mysterious, romantic, beautiful, all the many things that the hero of a good book should be. Edward stole the hearts of most of the female readers of this series. Yet, by the time you finish B.D., you find yourself either feeling terribly sorry for him because he chose such a lame heroine, or just contemptuous of him for becoming a doormat, a slave to Bella’s whims. I thought I’d scream if I had to hear him say “If it makes her happy, I’ll do it, even if it’s not what’s best for her” one more time. In B.D., the author sends the message through Edward that love and blind devotion are the same thing. They aren’t. Truly loving someone isn’t giving them free reign to stomp all over you and everything in their path, just because they think it will make them happy. Real love encompasses the occasional appropriate guidance of the loved one away from self-destructive desires toward a better way. But here, we are taught that if you love someone, you let them have what they want, all the time, without exception.
As for the story development, my greatest frustration is that the author created a very intricate world, complete with detailed descriptions of what could and could not happen in it. Then she decided not to play by these rules. Yes, I am referring to the sudden and inexplicable ability of a vampire to father a child. This felt very contrived and unbelievable, and introduced such a bizarre, nightmarish chain of events that I could hardly believe I was reading the story that began as Twilight. This baby feeds on the blood of its mother and slowly sucks her life away? Bella has to drink human blood, while she’s still human, to save her life and the life of her child? And she LIKES IT? This is the same, human Bella that turned green and almost passed out while doing blood typing in Biology class, right? Okay, I could see that her aversion to blood was going to go away after becoming a vampire. But while she was still human? Really? I felt sick the whole time I read about her drinking gallons of blood a day to sustain the child. Bleh. I still don’t get the whole scene where Edward asks Jacob to offer to make babies with Bella. What?!? Again, is this the author’s attempt at showing us the extent of true love? It was twisted and disturbing.
And the delivery of the baby…that was just plain disgusting. Bella vomiting gallons of blood, her bones snapping right and left, blood vessels popping in her eyes, Edward biting into her womb to get the baby out, and the tender moment when mommy sees baby for the first time is marred by said baby taking a bite out of her mommy. Ick! And I’ll just join the legions of people who are saying, “RENESMEE?!?” You’ve got to be kidding. This from the author who tastefully chose names like Edward, Bella, Carlisle, Alice…why didn’t she just name her “Brangelina” or “TomKat”? Or “Bedward?” I will also join the protests against Jacob imprinting on Bella and Edward’s daughter. I could see when the concept of imprinting was introduced that it would be the author’s way of making a happy ending for Jacob at the end of the story, and that was fine. I like a happy ending, and of course I wanted to see Jacob happy. But are we so inflexible that we can’t be happy with Jacob imprinting on a nice, new girl to the story? No, Bella must have her way. She can’t be happy without Jacob as a part of her life. And we’re supposed to feel happy and satisfied that she gets her way in the form of Jacob as her son-in-law? How is that a happy ending?
At the top of my list of grievances is the destruction of the message that was communicated so clearly in the first three books. Once Bella falls in love with Edward, she is confronted with some very difficult choices. If she wants to be with Edward, she must choose to leave human life behind her and become a vampire. The value of Eclipse was that it forced Bella to look long and hard at what she was choosing if she decided to become a vampire. She would have to cut ties with her human life…her mother, father, and everyone human that mattered to her. She could never have children of her own. She would have to deal with the bloodlust of being a newborn vampire. She would spend a significant amount of time developing the self-control and restraint that the rest of the Cullens had achieved. One of the most compelling elements of the first three books is Edward’s angst, his agonizing about the state of his soul as a vampire. He grieves what he sees as the loss of his soul. This is at the heart of his great reluctance to change Bella, the reason for his disappearance in New Moon. All the vampires who have chosen not to feed on humans hate what they have become. They are conflicted about who they are. None of them who remember life as a human can say with conviction that they wouldn’t go back if they could. Bella has to confront all of this and choose to sacrifice the value of her humanity for the love she feels for Edward. All of this is well and good and presents a very thought-provoking storyline. Then, in B.D., every one of these issues is neatly sidestepped in order to create an obstacle-free path to a happily-ever after ending for Queen Bella. First of all, from the moment she opens her eyes as a newborn vampire, everything is better. The world shimmers. She experiences everything so much more intensely, things are more beautiful, more colorful, more wonderful. What’s not to love about being a vampire? Within minutes, she is exhibiting the self-control that everyone else took decades to achieve. And how about the whole I-have-to-have-sex-before-I-become-a-vampire-because-all-
my-human-emotions-will-be-gone-for-awhile? Nope! Not only does she still experience all the emotions and passions she had as a human, but they are intensified! By the time we’re finished reading about Bella’s new life as a vampire, we have to wonder why anyone wouldn’t want to be a vampire. All the build-up for Bella to grow and mature through sacrifice and self-denial, wiped away. So much better for her not to have to suffer through that stuff, right? And she manages to get immortality and a baby, to boot. We have to wonder if everyone who claimed that becoming a vampire was a serious, heavy choice was just delusional. The nobility of the message is sacrificed in order to create a neat, happy ending for everyone.
I haven’t seen much, if any, speculation on what the cover of the book is trying to communicate to the reader, so here’s my take. The big white queen is, you guessed it, Queen Bella, the white vampire. The red pawn is you (or I), the blood-red reader, about to be sucked dry in the wake of the Queen’s destruction. Beware!
I wish Stephenie Meyer had ended with Twilight or at least an extended version of New Moon. I think I’ll be hauling my copies of the last three to the local library as a donation and trying to just enjoy Twilight for what it was before the rest of this mess came into play.
Where do I begin? How about with my least favorite character, Bella? She began the series with a lot of promise. Sure, some people said that she wasn’t well defined in the first book, but I never had a problem with her. Throughout New Moon and Eclipse, her character starts to decline. In B.D., Bella becomes intolerable. This girl is unbelievably selfish. She begins the book whining about the beautiful, expensive car Edward bought her. She whines about the wedding preparations, the dress, the ring. Poor thing has to *gasp* marry the man of her dreams! The injustice! She is far more concerned about nameless, faceless people mocking her for getting married young than she is about the happiness of the man she claims to love more than life itself. And her treatment of Jacob! Where to begin? This is a good kid had the misfortune to fall in love with her and though I had issues with his manipulation of her emotions at the end of Eclipse, still, he’s a teenage guy and you have to cut him some slack. But come on, Bella! Once she realizes she loves him, but that she loves Edward more, she chooses Edward. Fine. So let the poor guy go! Let him move on with his life! But no, she has to have her cake and eat it too. She hurts both Edward, the one she has chosen, and Jacob, the one she has rejected, by refusing to cut ties with him. She claims to hate herself for hurting him, says at one point that it’s “criminal” to injure him as much as she does, but will she love him enough to let him let go and move on? Nope. She wouldn’t “feel whole” without him, so she continues to cling to him. Even after she’s married. The culmination of this extreme selfish lack of consideration for anyone’s feelings but her own is when she slips and refers to the unborn baby as “EJ”. Did she even think to consider whether Edward would be happy about having his child named after his rival? No, she just did what she darn well wanted to do, and gave no thought to what Edward would want. Bella has become a tyrant. What Queen Bella wants, Queen Bella must have.
Now, a little bit about Edward. He was what made Twilight so magical. He was mysterious, romantic, beautiful, all the many things that the hero of a good book should be. Edward stole the hearts of most of the female readers of this series. Yet, by the time you finish B.D., you find yourself either feeling terribly sorry for him because he chose such a lame heroine, or just contemptuous of him for becoming a doormat, a slave to Bella’s whims. I thought I’d scream if I had to hear him say “If it makes her happy, I’ll do it, even if it’s not what’s best for her” one more time. In B.D., the author sends the message through Edward that love and blind devotion are the same thing. They aren’t. Truly loving someone isn’t giving them free reign to stomp all over you and everything in their path, just because they think it will make them happy. Real love encompasses the occasional appropriate guidance of the loved one away from self-destructive desires toward a better way. But here, we are taught that if you love someone, you let them have what they want, all the time, without exception.
As for the story development, my greatest frustration is that the author created a very intricate world, complete with detailed descriptions of what could and could not happen in it. Then she decided not to play by these rules. Yes, I am referring to the sudden and inexplicable ability of a vampire to father a child. This felt very contrived and unbelievable, and introduced such a bizarre, nightmarish chain of events that I could hardly believe I was reading the story that began as Twilight. This baby feeds on the blood of its mother and slowly sucks her life away? Bella has to drink human blood, while she’s still human, to save her life and the life of her child? And she LIKES IT? This is the same, human Bella that turned green and almost passed out while doing blood typing in Biology class, right? Okay, I could see that her aversion to blood was going to go away after becoming a vampire. But while she was still human? Really? I felt sick the whole time I read about her drinking gallons of blood a day to sustain the child. Bleh. I still don’t get the whole scene where Edward asks Jacob to offer to make babies with Bella. What?!? Again, is this the author’s attempt at showing us the extent of true love? It was twisted and disturbing.
And the delivery of the baby…that was just plain disgusting. Bella vomiting gallons of blood, her bones snapping right and left, blood vessels popping in her eyes, Edward biting into her womb to get the baby out, and the tender moment when mommy sees baby for the first time is marred by said baby taking a bite out of her mommy. Ick! And I’ll just join the legions of people who are saying, “RENESMEE?!?” You’ve got to be kidding. This from the author who tastefully chose names like Edward, Bella, Carlisle, Alice…why didn’t she just name her “Brangelina” or “TomKat”? Or “Bedward?” I will also join the protests against Jacob imprinting on Bella and Edward’s daughter. I could see when the concept of imprinting was introduced that it would be the author’s way of making a happy ending for Jacob at the end of the story, and that was fine. I like a happy ending, and of course I wanted to see Jacob happy. But are we so inflexible that we can’t be happy with Jacob imprinting on a nice, new girl to the story? No, Bella must have her way. She can’t be happy without Jacob as a part of her life. And we’re supposed to feel happy and satisfied that she gets her way in the form of Jacob as her son-in-law? How is that a happy ending?
At the top of my list of grievances is the destruction of the message that was communicated so clearly in the first three books. Once Bella falls in love with Edward, she is confronted with some very difficult choices. If she wants to be with Edward, she must choose to leave human life behind her and become a vampire. The value of Eclipse was that it forced Bella to look long and hard at what she was choosing if she decided to become a vampire. She would have to cut ties with her human life…her mother, father, and everyone human that mattered to her. She could never have children of her own. She would have to deal with the bloodlust of being a newborn vampire. She would spend a significant amount of time developing the self-control and restraint that the rest of the Cullens had achieved. One of the most compelling elements of the first three books is Edward’s angst, his agonizing about the state of his soul as a vampire. He grieves what he sees as the loss of his soul. This is at the heart of his great reluctance to change Bella, the reason for his disappearance in New Moon. All the vampires who have chosen not to feed on humans hate what they have become. They are conflicted about who they are. None of them who remember life as a human can say with conviction that they wouldn’t go back if they could. Bella has to confront all of this and choose to sacrifice the value of her humanity for the love she feels for Edward. All of this is well and good and presents a very thought-provoking storyline. Then, in B.D., every one of these issues is neatly sidestepped in order to create an obstacle-free path to a happily-ever after ending for Queen Bella. First of all, from the moment she opens her eyes as a newborn vampire, everything is better. The world shimmers. She experiences everything so much more intensely, things are more beautiful, more colorful, more wonderful. What’s not to love about being a vampire? Within minutes, she is exhibiting the self-control that everyone else took decades to achieve. And how about the whole I-have-to-have-sex-before-I-become-a-vampire-because-all-
my-human-emotions-will-be-gone-for-awhile? Nope! Not only does she still experience all the emotions and passions she had as a human, but they are intensified! By the time we’re finished reading about Bella’s new life as a vampire, we have to wonder why anyone wouldn’t want to be a vampire. All the build-up for Bella to grow and mature through sacrifice and self-denial, wiped away. So much better for her not to have to suffer through that stuff, right? And she manages to get immortality and a baby, to boot. We have to wonder if everyone who claimed that becoming a vampire was a serious, heavy choice was just delusional. The nobility of the message is sacrificed in order to create a neat, happy ending for everyone.
I haven’t seen much, if any, speculation on what the cover of the book is trying to communicate to the reader, so here’s my take. The big white queen is, you guessed it, Queen Bella, the white vampire. The red pawn is you (or I), the blood-red reader, about to be sucked dry in the wake of the Queen’s destruction. Beware!
I wish Stephenie Meyer had ended with Twilight or at least an extended version of New Moon. I think I’ll be hauling my copies of the last three to the local library as a donation and trying to just enjoy Twilight for what it was before the rest of this mess came into play.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 20, 2008
oh yes, so VERY many spoilers! and unladylike language, sorry.
p.1: god help me. Here we go.
p.8: yep, Edward is already "going overboard" protecting Bella.
p.20: Her parents think it's a good idea for her to marry this weirdo at 18? They never think ANYTHING is a good idea.
p.33: Vampire babies! creepy! in a good way.
p.58: Jacob!
p.72: I swear Bella never just goes anywhere, you always have to DRAG her like a toddler.
p.85: I think they just had sex!! OMG!!
p.86: now of course we have to suffer through pages and pages of Edward being "guilty" which means basically he is an asshole.
p.108: she MAKES him have sex with her again, on their HONEYMOON. What a slut.
p.121: oh, please no. Don't be pregnant.
p.123: God dammit.
p.124: The pregnancy is already showing??? huh?
p.132: Edward cold and furious for the 1985674th time
p.145: Jacob POV!
p.151: This whole thing with the imprinting on a two-year old is just so fucked up.
p.153: However, "I'd seen Quil play peekaboo for an hour straight without getting bored"--HAHAHA!
p.174: Oh, I get it, the vampire baby grows really really fast! And also: EW.
p.177: Edward racked with guilt for the 7893902057th time.
p.274: GAH! It broke her rib?? I am NEVER getting pregnant. Ever.
p.327: Haha, she wants to name it either Edward (of course) or..."Renesmee"? Really? No, really??? Oh please let it be a girl.
p.333: I hope we see this red-haired chick again; I like her.
p.350: OH MY GOD. I know I said "ew" before, but I truly had no idea. EW EW EW EW EW.
p.353: I am still horrified, but HAHAHAHA! RENESMEE!! Awesome.
p.354: Wow, I really didn't think she would actually have Bella become a vampire!
p.360: THIS HAD BETTER NOT BE WHAT I THINK IT IS, THAT'S ALL I HAVE TO SAY.
p.377: So apparently becoming a vampire feels like the worst torture imaginable, ever ever, but she's not going to scream because it might upset Edward.
p.405: Well, thank god she is able to find a flaw in her looks even though she's a goddesslike beauty now. It just wouldn't be Bella if she didn't hate herself.
p.409: Bella is the most gracefulest, loveliest vampire ever! She can even walk in heels now!
p.420: Really, she is THE MOST AMAZING VAMPIRE THAT HAS EVER EXISTED. Everyone is very impressed.
p.449: Oh lord, it WAS what I thought it was. Okay, so you are a teenage werewolf, and you form an unbreakable soul bond with the HALF-VAMPIRE DAUGHTER of the girl you have been in love with forever, who is ALSO now a vampire, and married to another vampire with disturbing rage issues, and you know you are going to marry this VAMPIRE BABY when she grows up (I suppose she doesn't have any choice in this), so how do you feel?
Fulfilled, apparently.
So what is going to happen to Leah now? I thought she and Jacob might end up together, but of course that wouldn't be DISTURBING ENOUGH, would it. Maybe she and her brother can get married or something.
p.463: Waitaminute. If Renesmee (heh!) is growing that fast, does that mean...?
Probably she'll be married to Jacob in a couple weeks.
p.474: Bella is relieved that even though she's a vampire now, her "essential core traits" of being a killjoy and a whiner are still intact.
p.485: Hee! Edward is a much better musician than the rest of his family, because while he was practicing, and reading about science, and learning languages, they were too busy having sex all the time! For real! Because vampires never get tired, so they never have to stop! Awesome.
Apparently they also can only have sex if they're married.
p.504: Coldly furious.
p.532: Coldly furious.
p.567: This entire series encapsulated in one sentence: "Wasn't shielding her more important than answering her questions?"
p.586: Wouldn't it make more sense to explain first, and THEN show them the vampire baby?
p.602: This whole thing about the different vampire powers is cool!
p.608: AWESOME. There is a fat vampire who is beautiful and the leader of her clan!
p.611: HAHAHA "someone is going to have to provide an index* (*see page 756)"
p.612: Huh. New word. "ferine" adj. Untamed; feral.
p.704: Coldly furious.
p.736: Oh good, so Renesmee should be able to get married by age seven and avoid the extra ten years of tedious waiting to be joined with her soulmate.
p.753: "No one's ever loved anyone as much as I love you." Yeah, yeah.
p.755: THE END. Okay, it started out pretty horrifyingly, but I enjoyed the last third or so. I still think Edward has no personality, but I guess that's what some people like.
And the red-haired girl never showed up again. Boo.
p.1: god help me. Here we go.
p.8: yep, Edward is already "going overboard" protecting Bella.
p.20: Her parents think it's a good idea for her to marry this weirdo at 18? They never think ANYTHING is a good idea.
p.33: Vampire babies! creepy! in a good way.
p.58: Jacob!
p.72: I swear Bella never just goes anywhere, you always have to DRAG her like a toddler.
p.85: I think they just had sex!! OMG!!
p.86: now of course we have to suffer through pages and pages of Edward being "guilty" which means basically he is an asshole.
p.108: she MAKES him have sex with her again, on their HONEYMOON. What a slut.
p.121: oh, please no. Don't be pregnant.
p.123: God dammit.
p.124: The pregnancy is already showing??? huh?
p.132: Edward cold and furious for the 1985674th time
p.145: Jacob POV!
p.151: This whole thing with the imprinting on a two-year old is just so fucked up.
p.153: However, "I'd seen Quil play peekaboo for an hour straight without getting bored"--HAHAHA!
p.174: Oh, I get it, the vampire baby grows really really fast! And also: EW.
p.177: Edward racked with guilt for the 7893902057th time.
p.274: GAH! It broke her rib?? I am NEVER getting pregnant. Ever.
p.327: Haha, she wants to name it either Edward (of course) or..."Renesmee"? Really? No, really??? Oh please let it be a girl.
p.333: I hope we see this red-haired chick again; I like her.
p.350: OH MY GOD. I know I said "ew" before, but I truly had no idea. EW EW EW EW EW.
p.353: I am still horrified, but HAHAHAHA! RENESMEE!! Awesome.
p.354: Wow, I really didn't think she would actually have Bella become a vampire!
p.360: THIS HAD BETTER NOT BE WHAT I THINK IT IS, THAT'S ALL I HAVE TO SAY.
p.377: So apparently becoming a vampire feels like the worst torture imaginable, ever ever, but she's not going to scream because it might upset Edward.
p.405: Well, thank god she is able to find a flaw in her looks even though she's a goddesslike beauty now. It just wouldn't be Bella if she didn't hate herself.
p.409: Bella is the most gracefulest, loveliest vampire ever! She can even walk in heels now!
p.420: Really, she is THE MOST AMAZING VAMPIRE THAT HAS EVER EXISTED. Everyone is very impressed.
p.449: Oh lord, it WAS what I thought it was. Okay, so you are a teenage werewolf, and you form an unbreakable soul bond with the HALF-VAMPIRE DAUGHTER of the girl you have been in love with forever, who is ALSO now a vampire, and married to another vampire with disturbing rage issues, and you know you are going to marry this VAMPIRE BABY when she grows up (I suppose she doesn't have any choice in this), so how do you feel?
Fulfilled, apparently.
So what is going to happen to Leah now? I thought she and Jacob might end up together, but of course that wouldn't be DISTURBING ENOUGH, would it. Maybe she and her brother can get married or something.
p.463: Waitaminute. If Renesmee (heh!) is growing that fast, does that mean...?
Probably she'll be married to Jacob in a couple weeks.
p.474: Bella is relieved that even though she's a vampire now, her "essential core traits" of being a killjoy and a whiner are still intact.
p.485: Hee! Edward is a much better musician than the rest of his family, because while he was practicing, and reading about science, and learning languages, they were too busy having sex all the time! For real! Because vampires never get tired, so they never have to stop! Awesome.
Apparently they also can only have sex if they're married.
p.504: Coldly furious.
p.532: Coldly furious.
p.567: This entire series encapsulated in one sentence: "Wasn't shielding her more important than answering her questions?"
p.586: Wouldn't it make more sense to explain first, and THEN show them the vampire baby?
p.602: This whole thing about the different vampire powers is cool!
p.608: AWESOME. There is a fat vampire who is beautiful and the leader of her clan!
p.611: HAHAHA "someone is going to have to provide an index* (*see page 756)"
p.612: Huh. New word. "ferine" adj. Untamed; feral.
p.704: Coldly furious.
p.736: Oh good, so Renesmee should be able to get married by age seven and avoid the extra ten years of tedious waiting to be joined with her soulmate.
p.753: "No one's ever loved anyone as much as I love you." Yeah, yeah.
p.755: THE END. Okay, it started out pretty horrifyingly, but I enjoyed the last third or so. I still think Edward has no personality, but I guess that's what some people like.
And the red-haired girl never showed up again. Boo.
December 14, 2025
Oh the memories. The angsty teen memories. They're all flooding back.
It should come as no surprise that I have a dark and dangerous past - I was a Twihard.
I loved this series with every beat of my teenage heart. I had a poster, I had a vegetarian vampire shirt, I had a themed birthday party, and (worst of all) I did this to a book:
I can't even open it anymore for fear of the pages falling out and the spine splintering...yet I can't bear to throw it away.
And now (ten years later), I'm revisiting the series to see how my opinion's changed over the last decade. For the most part, I still am pleasantly pleased by how much I enjoyed rereading.
I very nearly memorized the series as a teen so during the reread, it was nice to see the scenes with fresh eyes after all this time. It was like visiting an old friend.
However, this time around there were several moments/aspects that stood out so much clearer to adult-me:
Jacob went from a lovable sidekick to a mopey and whiny teen in my eyes.
It wasn't unbearable, but it was so much more noticeable this round:
15-year-old me thought this was perfectly reasonable (and undoubtedly romantic). 25-year-old me couldn't stop noticing how he kept trying to force himself on Bella in Eclipse and then did the whole woe-is-me when Bella kept trying to tell him to stop (even when she was married.) That werewolf needed a firm kick in the teeth.
“What do I look like? The Wizard of Oz? You need a brain? You need a heart? Go ahead, take mine. Take everything I have.”
AND (for the first time) I noticed how conveniently and absolutely perfect everything worked out for Bella. The sheer amount of coincidences drove me a bit bonkers:
15-year-old-me was so relieved that the tension/uncertainty was resolved. We could finally get those super-cute moments with the Cullen Family. 25-year-old-me kept waiting for something to happen.
"And then we continued blissfully into this small but perfect piece of our forever."
I mean, the first 2/3 of the book consists of Bella getting married and being pregnant. Lots and Lots of filler-fluff. She's the calmest newborn in centuries, she makes leaps and bounds with her gift and has a super adorable precocious child. It's verging on Mary-Sue territory.
Most notably, the series' end wasn't as all-consuming and life-altering as I remembered it being. I still enjoyed the series but it just doesn't hold to my memory. (I guess that's a product of growing up).
"Stop being so… optimistic. It’s getting on my nerves."
I'm a bit disappointed about that. Ah well. It's still a four-star-er in my book - here's to nostalgia and memories!
Audiobook Comments
For such a popular book, you'd think the audio would be a bit better.
The female voice (done by Ilyana Kadushin for Bella's parts) didn't have enough variation in tone - especially when she did male characters. Nearly every adult male had the same voice and the accents of the new/visiting vampires wasn't distinct enough.
The guy voice (done by Matt Walters) was a bit better for the distinction but sounded wooden throughout the book.
The 2018 Popsugar Reading Challenge - A book with the time of day in the title
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December 11, 2023
Congratulations to Breaking Dawn for being the first book in human history to be so long both emotionally and physically that its length is measured in centuries and tears of boredom shed rather than pages.
In other words: Snooze.
Does anyone remember why I decided to reread this series? Was it masochism? Self-hatred? The desire to review every book I've ever read? Divine punishment?
Whatever it was, that sh*t hurted.
I don't LOVE to hate-read things - I am still definitively a part of the population of people who do not enjoy consuming content that is bad - but I’ve been known to have a problematic fave or two in my time.
The first Twilight book, for example...if it hits me at the right time...when the tide is out and the moon is waning and the temperature is precisely that thing where it feels exactly like nothing...sometimes I have fun with it.
But now I can confirm that any such experience with books 2 through 4 is impossible.
This is just so boring.
Also, it’s dumb. Everyone has heard of Renesmee, the half-human half-vampire baby who is totally one of a kind (in having the world’s worst name, I mean. The monster creation part pales in comparison to that). She grows up crazy fast, and within a few days is big as hell and has shoulder length hair. Bella’s first thought upon seeing that child?
“She looks weeks, if not months old.”
You know. All those weeks-old babies with a long bob.
Plus there’s this vampire warzone party, where the previously completely unsociable Cullens suddenly have 847 friends, and all of them are boring and also sometimes racist. My personal favorite is Garrett, who inexplicably is supposed to have a mysterious past even as he says things as obvious as “‘The redcoats are coming, the redcoats are coming,’ Garrett muttered mysteriously to himself and then chuckled once.”
And let’s not forget the grand prize winner of cringe, the pièce de résistance, the moment we’ve all been waiting for: Bella and Edward finally swiping each other’s V-cards after hundreds of pages of moral pontificating and aggressive Mormon messaging from the immortal man himself.
I wanted to jump into this book and wring Edward’s marble neck myself. And then give Bella a reality check beatdown while I’m there.
Like. Imagine your boyfriend makes you MARRY him before you can get that d*ck and then once you’re on YOUR HONEYMOON he screws you once and then spends the rest of the time purposefully trying to tire you out so you won’t try to, gasp, have sex with your husband.
Also don’t even get me started on the hit-you-over-the-head anti-choice messaging in here.
I just convinced myself to drop this baby down to a one star rating.
Bottom line: If you want to brush up on your Mormon rhetoric in a tome that’s somehow just as dry and boring as the actual religious texts while also including vampires...have I got the book for you.
----------
pre-review
if i were stephenie meyer, i simply would have written this series to be less problematic and boring. no offense to her but i'm different
review to come / 2 stars probably
----------
currently-reading updates
HOW IS THIS BOOK SO LONG.
i feel like i've lived a thousand lifetimes within its pages and i'm not even at the halfway mark
----------
when i was in fourth grade there was this kid in my class who wore a twilight shirt EVERY DAY that said "life sucks, then you die." not sure which is more impressive now: that he read this 750-page book at 9 years old or that he'd settled into nihilism so early in life
----------
tbr review
my mom didn't let me read this book until i turned 13. it was because of the sex stuff but i prefer to think it was because of the imprinting-on-a-baby thing
In other words: Snooze.
Does anyone remember why I decided to reread this series? Was it masochism? Self-hatred? The desire to review every book I've ever read? Divine punishment?
Whatever it was, that sh*t hurted.
I don't LOVE to hate-read things - I am still definitively a part of the population of people who do not enjoy consuming content that is bad - but I’ve been known to have a problematic fave or two in my time.
The first Twilight book, for example...if it hits me at the right time...when the tide is out and the moon is waning and the temperature is precisely that thing where it feels exactly like nothing...sometimes I have fun with it.
But now I can confirm that any such experience with books 2 through 4 is impossible.
This is just so boring.
Also, it’s dumb. Everyone has heard of Renesmee, the half-human half-vampire baby who is totally one of a kind (in having the world’s worst name, I mean. The monster creation part pales in comparison to that). She grows up crazy fast, and within a few days is big as hell and has shoulder length hair. Bella’s first thought upon seeing that child?
“She looks weeks, if not months old.”
You know. All those weeks-old babies with a long bob.
Plus there’s this vampire warzone party, where the previously completely unsociable Cullens suddenly have 847 friends, and all of them are boring and also sometimes racist. My personal favorite is Garrett, who inexplicably is supposed to have a mysterious past even as he says things as obvious as “‘The redcoats are coming, the redcoats are coming,’ Garrett muttered mysteriously to himself and then chuckled once.”
And let’s not forget the grand prize winner of cringe, the pièce de résistance, the moment we’ve all been waiting for: Bella and Edward finally swiping each other’s V-cards after hundreds of pages of moral pontificating and aggressive Mormon messaging from the immortal man himself.
I wanted to jump into this book and wring Edward’s marble neck myself. And then give Bella a reality check beatdown while I’m there.
Like. Imagine your boyfriend makes you MARRY him before you can get that d*ck and then once you’re on YOUR HONEYMOON he screws you once and then spends the rest of the time purposefully trying to tire you out so you won’t try to, gasp, have sex with your husband.
Also don’t even get me started on the hit-you-over-the-head anti-choice messaging in here.
I just convinced myself to drop this baby down to a one star rating.
Bottom line: If you want to brush up on your Mormon rhetoric in a tome that’s somehow just as dry and boring as the actual religious texts while also including vampires...have I got the book for you.
----------
pre-review
if i were stephenie meyer, i simply would have written this series to be less problematic and boring. no offense to her but i'm different
review to come / 2 stars probably
----------
currently-reading updates
HOW IS THIS BOOK SO LONG.
i feel like i've lived a thousand lifetimes within its pages and i'm not even at the halfway mark
----------
when i was in fourth grade there was this kid in my class who wore a twilight shirt EVERY DAY that said "life sucks, then you die." not sure which is more impressive now: that he read this 750-page book at 9 years old or that he'd settled into nihilism so early in life
----------
tbr review
my mom didn't let me read this book until i turned 13. it was because of the sex stuff but i prefer to think it was because of the imprinting-on-a-baby thing
April 15, 2016
Robert Pattinson hates Twilight so much, it's hysterical.
Interviewer: “Millions of Twilight fans, they cannot wait to see this, it’s almost heartbreaking because they don’t want it to be over. It’s a little bittersweet, isn’t it?”
That look on his face is pure, unadulterated joy.
And let's not forget this:
From the mouth of the guy who plays him.
Or these:
And of course, the rest of the cast:
Interviewer: “Millions of Twilight fans, they cannot wait to see this, it’s almost heartbreaking because they don’t want it to be over. It’s a little bittersweet, isn’t it?”
That look on his face is pure, unadulterated joy.
And let's not forget this:
From the mouth of the guy who plays him.
Or these:
And of course, the rest of the cast:
August 9, 2008
I was so disenchanted with Eclipse I wasn't excited for this read, but I had to know how it ends. I held off judgment in hopes that the conclusion would redeem the series. The verdict? Hard-to-swallow soap opera. A car crash you can't stop staring at in hopes that something salvageable comes out of the wreckage. But nothing does. So bad I started taking notes on all the plot holes because I couldn't keep track. What happened to the story that captured the hearts of girls everywhere?
You can't fall in love with your characters so much you save them from the dilemma you created: the impossibilities of vampire and human love, the instinctual need to destroy between vampires and werewolves, the girl who has to choose between two boys in opposing worlds, the boy who gets left out, the girl who has to make massive sacrifices for her choice. You can't save them from the plot by taking it all back and saying "never mind the rules I created, you can all have it all without giving anything up for it." When you do that, you take an exciting premise, take all the fire and excitement out, and ruin the story. As an author, you have a responsibility to your story, your characters, your fans, even yourself as a creator, to let the story be.
I recommend you write your own ending. Or better yet (since I'm not really a fan of fan fiction), take your book back and get your money back. If everyone does, maybe Meyer will pretend it was a big joke and rewrite a plausible ending to the saga. Maybe this time her editor (and copy editor) will actually read it. By the double-digit errors I found not even looking I doubt he/she did.
What I expected from this story:
1. The big dilemma. In Eclipse Meyer finally showed the downfall of vampire life. Bella has to give up her family, the potential of her own family, her friendship with Jacob, and the ease of human life out in the open. Most importantly she takes on the internal moral struggle of an instinct to kill, of being a monster. This is serious sacrifice and I wanted to see some soul searching, some grieving, some preparation for death from Bella.
2. Vampire sex. Vampire trying not to kill human sex. Newborn vampire with unquenchable passion sex. No harlequin romance graphic, but like Twilight explored kissing, exploring how they could possibly do that.
3. One scary newborn vampire. Murderous screaming during the transition after a bite from Edward to save her from death. The rage, the passion, the strength, and most importantly the thirst, the unquenchable thirst, that overpowers all that is human. I wanted to see Bella going after a human, preferably someone she knows, and have to be restrained. I wanted to see the true monster that is vampire take shape before learning to control the beast.
4. A good showdown. Eclipse robbed us of the vampire battle. I didn't care if it was the Volturi coming after Bella or the werewolves after Edward. I just wanted a good fight (from all the buildup to one) and I wanted people to die (because a battle without death isn't realistic), maybe even Jacob sacrificing for Bella. Isn't killing the vein of their existence? I expected some death.
But alas that is not the story. I think I may have to start denying I've ever read the Twilight saga. I was going to buy the boxed set if for nothing else for a pretty addition to my bookshelf, but now I'm truly embarrassed to have read the series.
The rest of my review has spoilers.
There is more to complain about, but I am out of room. In a nutshell: part one: strange, part two: disgusting, part three: dull. I'm appalled it has more stars than New Moon. I guess some girls care more about a happy story than a good one. I didn't buy the book and I still want my money back. I feel robbed. Not having the guts to finish what you started not only ruins this book, but previous installments too. I will give her this: she used a dictionary to add a few big words and she kept it clean. But I can't read her books anymore. And I wish I could wash this one out of system. The saga had such potential and she killed it.
You can't fall in love with your characters so much you save them from the dilemma you created: the impossibilities of vampire and human love, the instinctual need to destroy between vampires and werewolves, the girl who has to choose between two boys in opposing worlds, the boy who gets left out, the girl who has to make massive sacrifices for her choice. You can't save them from the plot by taking it all back and saying "never mind the rules I created, you can all have it all without giving anything up for it." When you do that, you take an exciting premise, take all the fire and excitement out, and ruin the story. As an author, you have a responsibility to your story, your characters, your fans, even yourself as a creator, to let the story be.
I recommend you write your own ending. Or better yet (since I'm not really a fan of fan fiction), take your book back and get your money back. If everyone does, maybe Meyer will pretend it was a big joke and rewrite a plausible ending to the saga. Maybe this time her editor (and copy editor) will actually read it. By the double-digit errors I found not even looking I doubt he/she did.
What I expected from this story:
1. The big dilemma. In Eclipse Meyer finally showed the downfall of vampire life. Bella has to give up her family, the potential of her own family, her friendship with Jacob, and the ease of human life out in the open. Most importantly she takes on the internal moral struggle of an instinct to kill, of being a monster. This is serious sacrifice and I wanted to see some soul searching, some grieving, some preparation for death from Bella.
2. Vampire sex. Vampire trying not to kill human sex. Newborn vampire with unquenchable passion sex. No harlequin romance graphic, but like Twilight explored kissing, exploring how they could possibly do that.
3. One scary newborn vampire. Murderous screaming during the transition after a bite from Edward to save her from death. The rage, the passion, the strength, and most importantly the thirst, the unquenchable thirst, that overpowers all that is human. I wanted to see Bella going after a human, preferably someone she knows, and have to be restrained. I wanted to see the true monster that is vampire take shape before learning to control the beast.
4. A good showdown. Eclipse robbed us of the vampire battle. I didn't care if it was the Volturi coming after Bella or the werewolves after Edward. I just wanted a good fight (from all the buildup to one) and I wanted people to die (because a battle without death isn't realistic), maybe even Jacob sacrificing for Bella. Isn't killing the vein of their existence? I expected some death.
But alas that is not the story. I think I may have to start denying I've ever read the Twilight saga. I was going to buy the boxed set if for nothing else for a pretty addition to my bookshelf, but now I'm truly embarrassed to have read the series.
The rest of my review has spoilers.
There is more to complain about, but I am out of room. In a nutshell: part one: strange, part two: disgusting, part three: dull. I'm appalled it has more stars than New Moon. I guess some girls care more about a happy story than a good one. I didn't buy the book and I still want my money back. I feel robbed. Not having the guts to finish what you started not only ruins this book, but previous installments too. I will give her this: she used a dictionary to add a few big words and she kept it clean. But I can't read her books anymore. And I wish I could wash this one out of system. The saga had such potential and she killed it.
August 4, 2008
[pardon any grammatical/spelling errors, I'm not reading this over again--I didn't get much sleep obviously:]
If I could give this book a lower score, I absolutely would. When you create a book series, there tends to be an issue with the next book that comes out in the series having to be better than the last. Of course that is always a possibility for stories such as Harry Potter, where the plot is laced through all of the books and leads to an ultimate climax and resolution in the final book. Stephenie Meyer did not follow this example in any way, shape, or form.
Instead of possibly creating an internal plot that would follow the entire series, every book has...well, I cannot justify a plot in any of the books, save the first one (that was in the last 100 pages of the book), so I'll try to skim sweetly over this. For her last attempt, strike 4 on my count, Meyer rides this train till there are no more tracks; taking the train, and all of it's passengers on a bumpy, uncomfortable, and unforgivable journey no one had prepared for.
Bella's half-breed child shouldn't even exist, given Meyer's specific "VAMPIRES CANNOT HAVE CHILDREN", so of course she gives a pathetic, if not confusing, explanation to how Edward gets Bella pregnant. The child's name itself is atrocious; I honestly hope no one loves this series enough to name their own child that, out of their "love for Stephenie Meyer."
Let's remember what I said before: there is not a sustaining plot throughout these books, besides the fact that Bella wants to become a vampire; but even that is stretching it. So when Bella becomes pregnant, it's almost as if Meyer suddenly thought, "PLOT!" and took off at the speed of light in a direction that flabbergasted me. Has she even mentioned children in this entire book series? Besides the fact that little mutant Nessie takes the entire stage, Bella's giving birth to a mutant that should not exist (X-Men anyone?) seems to be the only thing that drives this story forward. Because otherwise, the story would have ended. Bella got married, Bella somehow someway got pregnant, Bella had a half-breed baby, Bella becomes a vampire, Jacob creepily imprints on said baby, and everyone lives freakishly happily ever after.
I shouldn't have to describe how horrific it is that the entire 800-pages of the final novel is about a baby. Bella seemed to move to Forks and somehow grow up in a year, getting married and having a baby, and living for forever with her ridiculously good-looking husband. I understand that Bella made the choice for herself, doesn't mean I have to think it was a good one. Or a good example for young girls to follow. I'm not going to step up on the soap box and preach about how many horrible morals this gives to girl's of today's generation (after feminism has fought to get us this far) because if they haven't read a cheap romance novel yet, they certainly will. Guys looking to date girls of that generation should beware however. If you don't sparkle in the sun, devote every step you take and every move you make to her, and like to watch her sleep, you might not have much of a chance.
But, back to the story, cough, I mean lack thereof. The Volturi coming in deemed itself, once again, random and overreaching for Meyer. As if she just wanted them to show up and have an epic battle, but it wasn't really epic and it didn't serve much of a point. However, if I was a 1000-year-old vampire, I'm sure I'd be bored enough to care about someone as trivial as Bella Swan too.
1/3 of the novel is in Jacob's perspective, and to be honest, that was the one part I enjoyed (somewhat). Only because I think Jacob was Meyer's best character. He shall forever be known as the character with a personality. However, as Meyer had introduced me to Jacob, and gave me reason to like him, she also had the power to do the opposite. Thank you, Stephenie Meyer for ruining one of the only realistic characters you created. *two thumbs way down* Not only did Jacob CREEP me out, he was so completely overbearing and whiny, I couldn't wait to get back to Bella, the whining queen! His imprinting on little Nessie just put the icing on the shit-cake I had been eating for the past 400 pages. I had assumed we went passed the pedophilia part with Quil, and come on, he imprinted on EDWARD AND BELLA'S BABY? Why couldn't he have imprinted on a 35-year-old alcoholic with an abusive husband and Meyer could give someone who needs saving a fighting chance by someone with super powers.
By this point, I was going to take an example from New Moon and jump off a cliff just to save myself from the rest of the book.
But I didn't, and I should have.
The rest of the book was almost as boring and laughable as the first half, but at least the first half had (gasp) fade-to-black sensual scenes.
As many people have been saying, this book is exactly like 1,000 stories on FanFiction.net--and if I can give you any advice, find a story on there and it might be a lot better than reading this.
And it would probably be 700 pages less.
If I could give this book a lower score, I absolutely would. When you create a book series, there tends to be an issue with the next book that comes out in the series having to be better than the last. Of course that is always a possibility for stories such as Harry Potter, where the plot is laced through all of the books and leads to an ultimate climax and resolution in the final book. Stephenie Meyer did not follow this example in any way, shape, or form.
Instead of possibly creating an internal plot that would follow the entire series, every book has...well, I cannot justify a plot in any of the books, save the first one (that was in the last 100 pages of the book), so I'll try to skim sweetly over this. For her last attempt, strike 4 on my count, Meyer rides this train till there are no more tracks; taking the train, and all of it's passengers on a bumpy, uncomfortable, and unforgivable journey no one had prepared for.
Bella's half-breed child shouldn't even exist, given Meyer's specific "VAMPIRES CANNOT HAVE CHILDREN", so of course she gives a pathetic, if not confusing, explanation to how Edward gets Bella pregnant. The child's name itself is atrocious; I honestly hope no one loves this series enough to name their own child that, out of their "love for Stephenie Meyer."
Let's remember what I said before: there is not a sustaining plot throughout these books, besides the fact that Bella wants to become a vampire; but even that is stretching it. So when Bella becomes pregnant, it's almost as if Meyer suddenly thought, "PLOT!" and took off at the speed of light in a direction that flabbergasted me. Has she even mentioned children in this entire book series? Besides the fact that little mutant Nessie takes the entire stage, Bella's giving birth to a mutant that should not exist (X-Men anyone?) seems to be the only thing that drives this story forward. Because otherwise, the story would have ended. Bella got married, Bella somehow someway got pregnant, Bella had a half-breed baby, Bella becomes a vampire, Jacob creepily imprints on said baby, and everyone lives freakishly happily ever after.
I shouldn't have to describe how horrific it is that the entire 800-pages of the final novel is about a baby. Bella seemed to move to Forks and somehow grow up in a year, getting married and having a baby, and living for forever with her ridiculously good-looking husband. I understand that Bella made the choice for herself, doesn't mean I have to think it was a good one. Or a good example for young girls to follow. I'm not going to step up on the soap box and preach about how many horrible morals this gives to girl's of today's generation (after feminism has fought to get us this far) because if they haven't read a cheap romance novel yet, they certainly will. Guys looking to date girls of that generation should beware however. If you don't sparkle in the sun, devote every step you take and every move you make to her, and like to watch her sleep, you might not have much of a chance.
But, back to the story, cough, I mean lack thereof. The Volturi coming in deemed itself, once again, random and overreaching for Meyer. As if she just wanted them to show up and have an epic battle, but it wasn't really epic and it didn't serve much of a point. However, if I was a 1000-year-old vampire, I'm sure I'd be bored enough to care about someone as trivial as Bella Swan too.
1/3 of the novel is in Jacob's perspective, and to be honest, that was the one part I enjoyed (somewhat). Only because I think Jacob was Meyer's best character. He shall forever be known as the character with a personality. However, as Meyer had introduced me to Jacob, and gave me reason to like him, she also had the power to do the opposite. Thank you, Stephenie Meyer for ruining one of the only realistic characters you created. *two thumbs way down* Not only did Jacob CREEP me out, he was so completely overbearing and whiny, I couldn't wait to get back to Bella, the whining queen! His imprinting on little Nessie just put the icing on the shit-cake I had been eating for the past 400 pages. I had assumed we went passed the pedophilia part with Quil, and come on, he imprinted on EDWARD AND BELLA'S BABY? Why couldn't he have imprinted on a 35-year-old alcoholic with an abusive husband and Meyer could give someone who needs saving a fighting chance by someone with super powers.
By this point, I was going to take an example from New Moon and jump off a cliff just to save myself from the rest of the book.
But I didn't, and I should have.
The rest of the book was almost as boring and laughable as the first half, but at least the first half had (gasp) fade-to-black sensual scenes.
As many people have been saying, this book is exactly like 1,000 stories on FanFiction.net--and if I can give you any advice, find a story on there and it might be a lot better than reading this.
And it would probably be 700 pages less.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 27, 2025
Maybe the most unhinged book I’ve ever read 💀 (okay that may be a slight exaggeration) hahahah sooo many WILD plot points that I did not see coming. Jacob’s plot line is something 😅, the name part really caught me off guard and had me cracking up. Overall still such a fun read though! This entire series feels like reality tv for high schoolers in the most entertaining way. Honestly sad to be saying goodbye to all of these characters 🥹🫶🏻. So glad I finally got to experience the twilight phenomenon. And final final thought is that Seth was my favorite character in the end. HES SO SWEET 🥹💗
July 25, 2010
Where do I begin? I LOVED this book. It was even better than I even imagined. So many surprises! I picked mine up at midnight when it was released and could hardly put it down.
So first off...the wedding was beautiful. The honeymoon was even better. Stephenie Meyer did an amazing job of writing a "tasteful" honeymoon scene. It wasn't dirty at all. It was beautiful. You knew they were able to have sex and that there was a definate strong "intensity" during these moments but she didn't go into too many explicit details which leaves much to the imagination (I loved the quote by Bella, "Why am I covered in feathers?"). It was PG-13. Plus they were married when it happened so that made it even better. I have to admit I was a little shocked she wrote the sex parts. I didn't think she would go there but I am so glad she did because it just made the bond between Edward and Bella even stronger if that was even possible. It was hot and sexy for sure! I am so happy Edward and Bella got their proper wedding & honeymoon and more importantly....that I got to read about it like I was right there! Does that make me a pervert? Oh who cares! It was amazing!
So what I never dreamed of happening was a pregnancy! This is when the story goes from pure happiness to total uncertainty and even sadness for some. Bella is adamant that she would keep the baby even though it was killing her, hoping she could keep her heart beating long enough so she could be turned into a vampire to save her. I have never felt so horrible for Edward. To say he was in agony would be an understatement. Chapter 9 was very hard for me to read because Edward was in so much pain. Pain isn’t even close to describing what he was feeling. Not that I doubted before but it was in this chapter that really solidified that Edward would do ANYTHING for Bella no matter how much pain it caused him. Pain he feels he deserves. I felt awful for him.
Chapter 18...the birth was by far the most intense chapter of all the books in the series for me. I was literally shaking as I read it. It was pretty graphic with Bella’s bones cracking and breaking, her spine shattering, throwing up all the blood she had been drinking to feed her unborn child. She was dying. I was on the edge of my seat wondering if they would be able to save the baby and at the same time save her. I always hoped Bella would become a vampire but I always had this feeling that Stephenie wouldn’t let that happen. I am so happy I was wrong. One of my favorite parts from the chapter was when Jacob was giving Bella CPR after the baby was born….
“Move your hands, Jacob,”
I looked up from Bella’s white eyes, still pumping her heart for her. Edward had a syringe in his hand-all silver, like it was made from steel.
“What’s that?”
His stone hand knocked mine out of the way. There was a tiny crunch as his blow broke my little finger. In the same second, he shoved the needle straight into her heart.
“My venom,” he answered as he pushed the plunger down.
You could feel that at this moment Edward was very somber. He was turning the woman he loved into a vampire. Something he had fought against for a long time because he didn't want her to have to give up any human experiences and eventually regret becoming a vampire. Now he did it to save her. There was no other way. I wish I could have been in his head at this time though it would have been very depressing I'm sure. Jacob too had to give in to letting her become a vampire to save her.
So now not only was Bella changed into a vampire, but she
was a mother and a wife. So many changes so fast. This all shocked me but nothing shocked me more than when Jacob imprints on Bella & Edward’s baby...Renesmee(not fond of the name...but thank goodness it wasn't an Edward Jacob! That name irritated me even more). I have to admit though it kinda freaked me out at first. I don't blame Bella for wanting to tear him apart. Like me I don't think she could have ever imagined this happening. This event was so significant. It released all the pain Jacob had to endure by being in love with Bella but knowing she would never be his. At the same time it tied him to her permanently. He still loved her but in the way it should have always been. He loved her as a friend and nothing more. Also with her change into a vampire & birth of Renesmee brought a release from the pull she felt to have Jacob as part of her life, though he would still be because of the whole imprinting thing but it would never complicate things between her and Edward’s relationship again which I was very grateful for. She loved him as a brother like she always wanted. Everything was as it should be.
So in the end the challenge was the Volturi. They were coming to kill all of them because they believed Edward & Bella had created a youngling. Changed a child into a vampire when really Renesmee was the biological child of Edward and Bella. I cried (the ugly kind, I was hysterical) at a point when Edward and Bella said their quiet goodbyes to their daughter and Jacob when they thought they were about to die. It was heart wrenching. It was so touching when Edward said to Jacob, "Goodbye Jacob, my brother.....my son." What a wonderful gesture from Edward to Jacob. Luckily in the end they were able to conquer because of Bella and her amazing gift to shield everyone she loved from the "special" gifts of the Volturi. I thought it was wonderful to see Bella so powerful and strong. That for once she was able to be the protector instead of the one being protected. She got to be the savior. This too made the unbreakable bond between her and Edward stronger. Because of her they were able to beat the Volturi and save their daughter that they loved more than anything. Their family was intact.
One of my absolute favorite parts (there are so many I have to say) was at the end when Bella removes her "shield" so Edward can read her thoughts. Edward was NOT expecting this. Not being able to all this time has driven him mad at times. Especially when it came to Jacob. He always wondered if Bella made the right decision. Now he knows without a doubt that she always loved him and that nothing can or ever will change that. Edward got to experience all the feelings she had for him as far back as she could remember. He can know now without a doubt that they truly belong together. What a wonderful gift to give Edward. Oh I just LOVE Edward! That Bella is one lucky vampire.
I was so glad this book had the Happily Ever After ending. Especially after all the horrible things that have occured in the past. Everything came together beautifully. I loved it. I liked Jacob a lot more in this book in fact I laughed out loud several times at him. I also liked Bella a lot more when she became a vampire. She wasn't as selfish and winey. I wanted to strangle her at times in the other books because of the way she treated Edward and even Jacob. The pain she caused both of them in the past because of her own selfish desires. Everything for the characters is balanced or in line how it should be in their relationships. I feel closer with the story now which I needed badly. These books totally consumed me to say the least. This was my favorite of the series by far. It was filled with love, suspense, true friendship, loyalty, sorrow, happiness and so much more. I look forward to reading it again! I don't think I will ever be able to find a series again that has affected me like this. These books are my favorites above all others!
So first off...the wedding was beautiful. The honeymoon was even better. Stephenie Meyer did an amazing job of writing a "tasteful" honeymoon scene. It wasn't dirty at all. It was beautiful. You knew they were able to have sex and that there was a definate strong "intensity" during these moments but she didn't go into too many explicit details which leaves much to the imagination (I loved the quote by Bella, "Why am I covered in feathers?"). It was PG-13. Plus they were married when it happened so that made it even better. I have to admit I was a little shocked she wrote the sex parts. I didn't think she would go there but I am so glad she did because it just made the bond between Edward and Bella even stronger if that was even possible. It was hot and sexy for sure! I am so happy Edward and Bella got their proper wedding & honeymoon and more importantly....that I got to read about it like I was right there! Does that make me a pervert? Oh who cares! It was amazing!
So what I never dreamed of happening was a pregnancy! This is when the story goes from pure happiness to total uncertainty and even sadness for some. Bella is adamant that she would keep the baby even though it was killing her, hoping she could keep her heart beating long enough so she could be turned into a vampire to save her. I have never felt so horrible for Edward. To say he was in agony would be an understatement. Chapter 9 was very hard for me to read because Edward was in so much pain. Pain isn’t even close to describing what he was feeling. Not that I doubted before but it was in this chapter that really solidified that Edward would do ANYTHING for Bella no matter how much pain it caused him. Pain he feels he deserves. I felt awful for him.
Chapter 18...the birth was by far the most intense chapter of all the books in the series for me. I was literally shaking as I read it. It was pretty graphic with Bella’s bones cracking and breaking, her spine shattering, throwing up all the blood she had been drinking to feed her unborn child. She was dying. I was on the edge of my seat wondering if they would be able to save the baby and at the same time save her. I always hoped Bella would become a vampire but I always had this feeling that Stephenie wouldn’t let that happen. I am so happy I was wrong. One of my favorite parts from the chapter was when Jacob was giving Bella CPR after the baby was born….
“Move your hands, Jacob,”
I looked up from Bella’s white eyes, still pumping her heart for her. Edward had a syringe in his hand-all silver, like it was made from steel.
“What’s that?”
His stone hand knocked mine out of the way. There was a tiny crunch as his blow broke my little finger. In the same second, he shoved the needle straight into her heart.
“My venom,” he answered as he pushed the plunger down.
You could feel that at this moment Edward was very somber. He was turning the woman he loved into a vampire. Something he had fought against for a long time because he didn't want her to have to give up any human experiences and eventually regret becoming a vampire. Now he did it to save her. There was no other way. I wish I could have been in his head at this time though it would have been very depressing I'm sure. Jacob too had to give in to letting her become a vampire to save her.
So now not only was Bella changed into a vampire, but she
was a mother and a wife. So many changes so fast. This all shocked me but nothing shocked me more than when Jacob imprints on Bella & Edward’s baby...Renesmee(not fond of the name...but thank goodness it wasn't an Edward Jacob! That name irritated me even more). I have to admit though it kinda freaked me out at first. I don't blame Bella for wanting to tear him apart. Like me I don't think she could have ever imagined this happening. This event was so significant. It released all the pain Jacob had to endure by being in love with Bella but knowing she would never be his. At the same time it tied him to her permanently. He still loved her but in the way it should have always been. He loved her as a friend and nothing more. Also with her change into a vampire & birth of Renesmee brought a release from the pull she felt to have Jacob as part of her life, though he would still be because of the whole imprinting thing but it would never complicate things between her and Edward’s relationship again which I was very grateful for. She loved him as a brother like she always wanted. Everything was as it should be.
So in the end the challenge was the Volturi. They were coming to kill all of them because they believed Edward & Bella had created a youngling. Changed a child into a vampire when really Renesmee was the biological child of Edward and Bella. I cried (the ugly kind, I was hysterical) at a point when Edward and Bella said their quiet goodbyes to their daughter and Jacob when they thought they were about to die. It was heart wrenching. It was so touching when Edward said to Jacob, "Goodbye Jacob, my brother.....my son." What a wonderful gesture from Edward to Jacob. Luckily in the end they were able to conquer because of Bella and her amazing gift to shield everyone she loved from the "special" gifts of the Volturi. I thought it was wonderful to see Bella so powerful and strong. That for once she was able to be the protector instead of the one being protected. She got to be the savior. This too made the unbreakable bond between her and Edward stronger. Because of her they were able to beat the Volturi and save their daughter that they loved more than anything. Their family was intact.
One of my absolute favorite parts (there are so many I have to say) was at the end when Bella removes her "shield" so Edward can read her thoughts. Edward was NOT expecting this. Not being able to all this time has driven him mad at times. Especially when it came to Jacob. He always wondered if Bella made the right decision. Now he knows without a doubt that she always loved him and that nothing can or ever will change that. Edward got to experience all the feelings she had for him as far back as she could remember. He can know now without a doubt that they truly belong together. What a wonderful gift to give Edward. Oh I just LOVE Edward! That Bella is one lucky vampire.
I was so glad this book had the Happily Ever After ending. Especially after all the horrible things that have occured in the past. Everything came together beautifully. I loved it. I liked Jacob a lot more in this book in fact I laughed out loud several times at him. I also liked Bella a lot more when she became a vampire. She wasn't as selfish and winey. I wanted to strangle her at times in the other books because of the way she treated Edward and even Jacob. The pain she caused both of them in the past because of her own selfish desires. Everything for the characters is balanced or in line how it should be in their relationships. I feel closer with the story now which I needed badly. These books totally consumed me to say the least. This was my favorite of the series by far. It was filled with love, suspense, true friendship, loyalty, sorrow, happiness and so much more. I look forward to reading it again! I don't think I will ever be able to find a series again that has affected me like this. These books are my favorites above all others!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 14, 2014
Reviewer update Aug 2009: I have demoted the book from 5 to 4 stars. My confession/explanation is at the end of the original, unedited review.
___
Yes, I gave it 5-stars. This is partly because I was so pleased by it compared to the last two books in the series that I overreacted. But I also approve of her approach to the book and have rated it so highly in order to counteract those reviewers out there who hated it because they felt Bella was a bad example to young girls.
***THESE TWO PARAGRAPHS SPOIL THINGS THAT HAPPEN EARLY IN THE BOOK***
I have a bone to pick with these people. Read some of the reviews on Amazon or GoodReads and you will find a certain type of person who feels that Bella's character fails as a role model for young women today. Why? Because she, gasp, got married and had a child at a young age.
Oh, my, what is the world coming to when young people choose eternal love and devotion! (Oh that more young women could be more like the implausibly articulate yet utterly selfish lead in the movie Juno!) In my favorite example, one reviewer on Amazon claimed it wasn't credible that a girl as young as Bella would feel joy at sensing a baby growing inside her. "I'm 28 and if I felt something moving in me, I would freak," she said, "I can't believe a 19-year old would be happy about it."
***END OF SPOILAGE***
Sadness ensues. Women and men from every culture in every era of history have found a tremendous and peculiar satisfaction in their children. It doesn't matter where you believe this instinct came from, it's real and it manifests millions of times over. Should we be so surprised that Stephenie Meyer would be one of the billions who believe this love to be real? Read the author's bio and it becomes clear: She was married at 21 before she finished college and had three children while still in her 20s. But one can hardly call her a "failure" for choosing family first. By all standards she's fabulously successful and wealthy. Plus, she has a college degree (one of the big beefs some people had with Bella's choice to postpone college). Are we really surprised that Stephenie would see the world through rose-colored, happiness-prone glasses when her own life is exactly that, deliriously happy?
Social polemics aside for a moment. The one thing this book lacked was a satisfying climactic, apocalyptic battle royale between the forces of vampire good and vampire evil. I know this book was intended to cap off a romance series, not The Lord of the Rings but there's a reason books of high fantasy all end in cataclysmic bloodshed. It takes a conflict of such dramatic proportions to drive the point of a story deep into our minds. And the point of this story, if you weren't too focused on your own family planning to notice it, was worthy of such dramatic punctuation.
The real point of this book is that we can and should choose love. That despite our personal weaknesses and faults -- our immature attempts at love and our petty jealousies -- we can make important, permanent decisions that will tie us to other people, making their lives and our lives better in the process. The battle I propose -- one I hope sees the light of day in a future novel -- would seal Bella's decisions and the decisions of her family and loved ones in a way that would render their commitments real. Their marital love, their parental love, their familial love, and the love of fellowship with others who share their principles.
Some would have to die to preserve the love they have made immortal. Others would have to kill to do the same. Nothing is more final, especially for immortals. But they would do so to symbolize the triumph of their love over the petty dynasty of the Volturi and thus establish a global movement of vampires that respect human life and restrain their selfish hungers in deference to the greater good. Something that wise humans do every day.
Such a symbolic battle would take this series to the next level. But even without it, this book is the best evidence that Meyer wasn't really writing a sloppy romance saga for misty-eyed girls, but was instead telling a story about the eternal power of love and self-denial.
___
Update from Aug 2009
I have had some fabulous comments to my review (please read them, most are very intelligent). I have been properly chided by many of these reviews for overreacting to the "Bella is a bad role model" flack and failing to acknowledge the principal flaw of this book. Amy said it best below: Meyer shortchanged us by not forcing Bella to face any hard choices. Bella got everything she wanted, including a (strange) relationship with Jacob. Nobody she loved got hurt -- which was the problem I did mention above -- and she never had to disappoint anyone.
Given that a year has passed, I have some distance on all the whining that went on about Bella not being a protofeminist. As a result, I should own up to the fact that this fourth book fails to deliver not only the climax I hoped for, but the real character crisis and development that a saga of this length should strive for. Or that we all should strive for in our own lives, to go all metaphysical on you for a moment. So I have demoted the book from 5 stars to 4 and begun to ruminate on the topic of why Meyer -- a woman possessed of such clear imagination -- was unwilling or unable to make Bella's life hard. Here's what I have come up with, for what it's worth:
1 - Meyer's own life is pretty darn pleasant. Let's be honest, she has everything most people think they want. All of us who struggle to write books that nobody reads desperately wish for her success (a fact that generates more than few snippy comments on Goodreads, I might suggest). She has a whole community of women around her who adore her and come to all-night parties when she debuts a book or movie, just to be near her. In the end, she might make Bella after her own image because she doesn't know that life ultimately requires pain.
2 - Meyer is a Mormon. For those not acquainted with the faith, Mormonism is a faith that believes everything will ultimately be okay. If not in this life, then in the next. In fact, the whole vampire immortality gig is just a metaphor for the Mormon idea of the afterlife: You get to be with the ones you love forever, without pain. In that way, Bella is a perfect reflection of the ideal Mormon eternity: God forgives us for our idiocy, acknowledges our flawed attempts at love by magnifying them and making them eternal. Though this is only one side of Mormonism -- it's also a faith with sorrowful history of persecution. Mormons certainly suffer plenty in this life just like everyone else, so this explanation is only true to the extent that Meyer has willingly isolated Mormonism's view of the end state of humanity.
3 - Twilight is just escapist fantasy. This is not only the most obvious but probably the strongest of my three explanations. We're so accustomed to watching James Bond run through the street with machine guns trained on him that never hit their mark that we no longer point out that Bond is completely implausible and ultimately unsatisfying as a character. But we're not used to reading fiction in which women get everything they want. (At least, I'm not.) So we get tied up in knots about the lack of deeper meaning and pathos when in reality, Meyer never promised us a garden of sorrow and personal growth.
So even though I have to demote the book, I still feel like the saga was worth reading; both because of the fun I had teasing about its flaws but also because it gives me fodder for worthwhile introspection. Oh, and it connected me to some great commenters who I now follow on Goodreads.
___
Yes, I gave it 5-stars. This is partly because I was so pleased by it compared to the last two books in the series that I overreacted. But I also approve of her approach to the book and have rated it so highly in order to counteract those reviewers out there who hated it because they felt Bella was a bad example to young girls.
***THESE TWO PARAGRAPHS SPOIL THINGS THAT HAPPEN EARLY IN THE BOOK***
I have a bone to pick with these people. Read some of the reviews on Amazon or GoodReads and you will find a certain type of person who feels that Bella's character fails as a role model for young women today. Why? Because she, gasp, got married and had a child at a young age.
Oh, my, what is the world coming to when young people choose eternal love and devotion! (Oh that more young women could be more like the implausibly articulate yet utterly selfish lead in the movie Juno!) In my favorite example, one reviewer on Amazon claimed it wasn't credible that a girl as young as Bella would feel joy at sensing a baby growing inside her. "I'm 28 and if I felt something moving in me, I would freak," she said, "I can't believe a 19-year old would be happy about it."
***END OF SPOILAGE***
Sadness ensues. Women and men from every culture in every era of history have found a tremendous and peculiar satisfaction in their children. It doesn't matter where you believe this instinct came from, it's real and it manifests millions of times over. Should we be so surprised that Stephenie Meyer would be one of the billions who believe this love to be real? Read the author's bio and it becomes clear: She was married at 21 before she finished college and had three children while still in her 20s. But one can hardly call her a "failure" for choosing family first. By all standards she's fabulously successful and wealthy. Plus, she has a college degree (one of the big beefs some people had with Bella's choice to postpone college). Are we really surprised that Stephenie would see the world through rose-colored, happiness-prone glasses when her own life is exactly that, deliriously happy?
Social polemics aside for a moment. The one thing this book lacked was a satisfying climactic, apocalyptic battle royale between the forces of vampire good and vampire evil. I know this book was intended to cap off a romance series, not The Lord of the Rings but there's a reason books of high fantasy all end in cataclysmic bloodshed. It takes a conflict of such dramatic proportions to drive the point of a story deep into our minds. And the point of this story, if you weren't too focused on your own family planning to notice it, was worthy of such dramatic punctuation.
The real point of this book is that we can and should choose love. That despite our personal weaknesses and faults -- our immature attempts at love and our petty jealousies -- we can make important, permanent decisions that will tie us to other people, making their lives and our lives better in the process. The battle I propose -- one I hope sees the light of day in a future novel -- would seal Bella's decisions and the decisions of her family and loved ones in a way that would render their commitments real. Their marital love, their parental love, their familial love, and the love of fellowship with others who share their principles.
Some would have to die to preserve the love they have made immortal. Others would have to kill to do the same. Nothing is more final, especially for immortals. But they would do so to symbolize the triumph of their love over the petty dynasty of the Volturi and thus establish a global movement of vampires that respect human life and restrain their selfish hungers in deference to the greater good. Something that wise humans do every day.
Such a symbolic battle would take this series to the next level. But even without it, this book is the best evidence that Meyer wasn't really writing a sloppy romance saga for misty-eyed girls, but was instead telling a story about the eternal power of love and self-denial.
___
Update from Aug 2009
I have had some fabulous comments to my review (please read them, most are very intelligent). I have been properly chided by many of these reviews for overreacting to the "Bella is a bad role model" flack and failing to acknowledge the principal flaw of this book. Amy said it best below: Meyer shortchanged us by not forcing Bella to face any hard choices. Bella got everything she wanted, including a (strange) relationship with Jacob. Nobody she loved got hurt -- which was the problem I did mention above -- and she never had to disappoint anyone.
Given that a year has passed, I have some distance on all the whining that went on about Bella not being a protofeminist. As a result, I should own up to the fact that this fourth book fails to deliver not only the climax I hoped for, but the real character crisis and development that a saga of this length should strive for. Or that we all should strive for in our own lives, to go all metaphysical on you for a moment. So I have demoted the book from 5 stars to 4 and begun to ruminate on the topic of why Meyer -- a woman possessed of such clear imagination -- was unwilling or unable to make Bella's life hard. Here's what I have come up with, for what it's worth:
1 - Meyer's own life is pretty darn pleasant. Let's be honest, she has everything most people think they want. All of us who struggle to write books that nobody reads desperately wish for her success (a fact that generates more than few snippy comments on Goodreads, I might suggest). She has a whole community of women around her who adore her and come to all-night parties when she debuts a book or movie, just to be near her. In the end, she might make Bella after her own image because she doesn't know that life ultimately requires pain.
2 - Meyer is a Mormon. For those not acquainted with the faith, Mormonism is a faith that believes everything will ultimately be okay. If not in this life, then in the next. In fact, the whole vampire immortality gig is just a metaphor for the Mormon idea of the afterlife: You get to be with the ones you love forever, without pain. In that way, Bella is a perfect reflection of the ideal Mormon eternity: God forgives us for our idiocy, acknowledges our flawed attempts at love by magnifying them and making them eternal. Though this is only one side of Mormonism -- it's also a faith with sorrowful history of persecution. Mormons certainly suffer plenty in this life just like everyone else, so this explanation is only true to the extent that Meyer has willingly isolated Mormonism's view of the end state of humanity.
3 - Twilight is just escapist fantasy. This is not only the most obvious but probably the strongest of my three explanations. We're so accustomed to watching James Bond run through the street with machine guns trained on him that never hit their mark that we no longer point out that Bond is completely implausible and ultimately unsatisfying as a character. But we're not used to reading fiction in which women get everything they want. (At least, I'm not.) So we get tied up in knots about the lack of deeper meaning and pathos when in reality, Meyer never promised us a garden of sorrow and personal growth.
So even though I have to demote the book, I still feel like the saga was worth reading; both because of the fun I had teasing about its flaws but also because it gives me fodder for worthwhile introspection. Oh, and it connected me to some great commenters who I now follow on Goodreads.
August 3, 2008
Page 318 - Had her body changed because she was a werewolf? Or had she become a werewolf because her body was wrong? The only female werewolf in the history of forever. Was that because she wasn't as female as she should be?
Okay, it's always been obvious that the only things Smeyer finds important in life are marriage and babies, the younger the better, but what the fuck, y'all. I am beyond disgusted at this. (edit - this is kind of unclear, mostly because at the time of typing I was too angry to think properly. I'm disgusted at the statement that women who cannot have children are less than female, with the implication that the only point of being a woman is reproduction. Which is bullshit. Families are great and all, but they are not the be-all-end-all of my double X's, and sterility does not change one's femininity. Blah.)
Yeah, finished - well, meh. Writing was better, but by the end none of the characters were recognizable except Alice - ILU ALICE - and Bella became even more of a Mary Sue than she had been before, which I think managed to break part of the universe. Death Baby was annoying, Edward and Jacob both came over all woobie, and the ending was the BIGGEST FUCKING COP-OUT. You mean to tell me you collect sixty vampires and nearly twenty werewolves-that-aren't in one place, and there isn't so much as a schoolyard rumble? Come on.
Things I liked - uh, Leah. Leah and Seth. Rock on, Clearwaters. And...yeah, that's pretty much it.
These books are crack and have always been crack, but this was the bad crack.
OH ONE MORE THING, THIS MADE ME REALLY MAD - What is it with English majors and fantasy writers trying to justify their fuckery with science? That whole mess with chromosomes, and how vampires have 25 and humans have 23 which is why Alice can see their futures but she can't see werewolves' futures because they have 24, and the reason she can't see the bb is because it has the average of Bella and Edward - what the hell is that? Seriously? Other than complete and utter pseudo-intellectual laziness? It'd be better if she'd just handwaved it - honestly, it is a novel about vampires and werewolves; it's FINE if you just throw up your hands and blithely say "Magic!" So WHY MUST YOU MAKE THE BIOLOGISTS CRY?
original review: Look, I need more vampire crackfic, okay? Don't judge.
Predictions, for the lulz:
-Jacob dies (for max angst) or imprints on non-Bella (because I don't think Meyer has the guts to kill anyone off, honestly)
-Angela, as joked about in previous books, is revealed to be a witch
-Alice is even more awesome and bribes Edward into giving her a Ferrari
-Bella doesn't go vamp due to angst
-Edward magically turns human and he and Bella get maaaaaarried and live as happy mundanes for the rest of their days
-lots of angst and hopefully LOTS of sparkling, because, seriously.
Why are we reading these books again?
SPARKLY. GODDAMN. VAMPIRES.
Okay, it's always been obvious that the only things Smeyer finds important in life are marriage and babies, the younger the better, but what the fuck, y'all. I am beyond disgusted at this. (edit - this is kind of unclear, mostly because at the time of typing I was too angry to think properly. I'm disgusted at the statement that women who cannot have children are less than female, with the implication that the only point of being a woman is reproduction. Which is bullshit. Families are great and all, but they are not the be-all-end-all of my double X's, and sterility does not change one's femininity. Blah.)
Yeah, finished - well, meh. Writing was better, but by the end none of the characters were recognizable except Alice - ILU ALICE - and Bella became even more of a Mary Sue than she had been before, which I think managed to break part of the universe. Death Baby was annoying, Edward and Jacob both came over all woobie, and the ending was the BIGGEST FUCKING COP-OUT. You mean to tell me you collect sixty vampires and nearly twenty werewolves-that-aren't in one place, and there isn't so much as a schoolyard rumble? Come on.
Things I liked - uh, Leah. Leah and Seth. Rock on, Clearwaters. And...yeah, that's pretty much it.
These books are crack and have always been crack, but this was the bad crack.
OH ONE MORE THING, THIS MADE ME REALLY MAD - What is it with English majors and fantasy writers trying to justify their fuckery with science? That whole mess with chromosomes, and how vampires have 25 and humans have 23 which is why Alice can see their futures but she can't see werewolves' futures because they have 24, and the reason she can't see the bb is because it has the average of Bella and Edward - what the hell is that? Seriously? Other than complete and utter pseudo-intellectual laziness? It'd be better if she'd just handwaved it - honestly, it is a novel about vampires and werewolves; it's FINE if you just throw up your hands and blithely say "Magic!" So WHY MUST YOU MAKE THE BIOLOGISTS CRY?
original review: Look, I need more vampire crackfic, okay? Don't judge.
Predictions, for the lulz:
-Jacob dies (for max angst) or imprints on non-Bella (because I don't think Meyer has the guts to kill anyone off, honestly)
-Angela, as joked about in previous books, is revealed to be a witch
-Alice is even more awesome and bribes Edward into giving her a Ferrari
-Bella doesn't go vamp due to angst
-Edward magically turns human and he and Bella get maaaaaarried and live as happy mundanes for the rest of their days
-lots of angst and hopefully LOTS of sparkling, because, seriously.
Why are we reading these books again?
SPARKLY. GODDAMN. VAMPIRES.
March 19, 2023
"Fire and ice, somehow existing together without destroying each other. More proof that I belonged with him."
Theory time- or maybe I am just overthinking
Caius calls the werewolves 'shapeshifters' and later Edward goes on to tell that there were different kinds of werewolves that existed before Caius had them hunted to near extinction. (Ones that needed the full moon and all).
So if that's true, is it possible that Stephenie Meyer might write about them? With two more books to come..a darker story perhaps? Could it be that Stephenie Meyer included that bit of information with a spin off in mind and never executed it?
~•~•~
So many thoughts, if this review feels messy to you please note that there was a lot to cover and apologies for the lack of order and for the length of this review lol.
Let me start by saying that this book really is a work of art despite the many many flaws. Breaking Dawn has been written with so much love, it's hard to not just immerse yourself in it and enjoy the sweetness of it. Although I do wish there were Volturi deaths in it😂
Part 1- Bella
The fact that the wedding theme was centred around Edward was so precious! I loved that idea; given how he has been so selfless throughout the series this was something he deserved. The wedding was absolutely beautiful. I loved Billy, Seth and Sue were in attendance.
But I do wish that their honeymoon phase had lasted for long. That Bella had stayed human for a bit longer. I wish we could've seen them go to Dartmouth together. Bella and Edward as a couple rarely got a moment alone in this book and although it's not a big flaw, it was something I personally wish I could've seen more of. Their time on Isle-Esme was a definite highlight.
Part 2- Jacob
Jacob's POV was another highlight for me in this book. It's so easy to read, always humourous and unputdownable. Jacob brings a lively aura to the book, there's never a dull moment with him. I liked how he stepped up as an Alpha. The relationship with Seth and Leah as betas was so worth reading. The way Jacob warms up to the Cullens is so satisfying to read.
Seth's relationship with the Cullens have always been friendly but I liked how much more of it we got to see and Leah's restrictions maintained a balance.
Leah being the only ever female werewolf to exist in the Twilight world is something I wish Stephenie Meyer would've handled better. I would still LOVE for a spin off series for the wolves.
The pregnancy was meh. I'm not a fan of the pregnancy trope and this book might be the reason why. It robbed me off the Edward- Bella moments. I know I'm being petty but it is what it is 😂🙈 Rosalie and Bella's budding friendship was a nice change tho. The birth scene was so INTENSE, it still gives me chills every time I read it. I'm so glad Meyer didn't end it on a cliffhanger and made us wait for the next book - that would've been devastating.
Part 3- Bella
So her newborn experience was AMAZING. She was born to be a vampire and that showed. Bella's character felt so much lighter, easy going and it brought so much color to her personality.
But this the part where I find most of my flaws. Firstly let me address the name- Renesmee Carlie Cullen- it's a buzzkill. I get it Meyer was trying to be sentimental but I gagged.
Secondly, the imprinting- Jacob didn't need anyone. He was doing fine on his own. There was no need for him to get a love interest especially one that just came out of Bella's womb looking like Annabelle from the Conjuring!! The imprinting IS so problematic on many levels and I don't see how there are people justifying it. Meyer could've written a spin off series and then Jacob could've imprinted on someone his own age, or close to his age. This whole imprinting part is something I try very hard to forget about. Thirdly, I don't think that Alice leaving and the whole J. Jenks thing made much sense. It was a whole "what if" scenario.
Moving on, I wish the conflict with the Volturi could've been darker. The movies did it better. But that's not something worth complaining about. I loved how Bella's supernatural gift as being a shield was utilised. It was badass. Something underrated about the third part is- Charlie and Bella's relationship. Charlie is such a good father, he should be protected at all costs🥺
You know that list that's at the end of the book (made by Jacob), it irks me how there's not an asterisk on Emmett's name. It's something very petty but it does bother me🙈🙈
This was such a beautiful book to end an equally beautiful Saga. I still miss the characters so much🥺 It wasn't a perfect book or a perfect series, but it's quite lovable. I didn't want it to end but glad I have Midnight Sun to satisfy my Edward heart.
Theory time- or maybe I am just overthinking
Caius calls the werewolves 'shapeshifters' and later Edward goes on to tell that there were different kinds of werewolves that existed before Caius had them hunted to near extinction. (Ones that needed the full moon and all).
So if that's true, is it possible that Stephenie Meyer might write about them? With two more books to come..a darker story perhaps? Could it be that Stephenie Meyer included that bit of information with a spin off in mind and never executed it?
~•~•~
So many thoughts, if this review feels messy to you please note that there was a lot to cover and apologies for the lack of order and for the length of this review lol.
Let me start by saying that this book really is a work of art despite the many many flaws. Breaking Dawn has been written with so much love, it's hard to not just immerse yourself in it and enjoy the sweetness of it. Although I do wish there were Volturi deaths in it😂
Part 1- Bella
The fact that the wedding theme was centred around Edward was so precious! I loved that idea; given how he has been so selfless throughout the series this was something he deserved. The wedding was absolutely beautiful. I loved Billy, Seth and Sue were in attendance.
But I do wish that their honeymoon phase had lasted for long. That Bella had stayed human for a bit longer. I wish we could've seen them go to Dartmouth together. Bella and Edward as a couple rarely got a moment alone in this book and although it's not a big flaw, it was something I personally wish I could've seen more of. Their time on Isle-Esme was a definite highlight.
Part 2- Jacob
Jacob's POV was another highlight for me in this book. It's so easy to read, always humourous and unputdownable. Jacob brings a lively aura to the book, there's never a dull moment with him. I liked how he stepped up as an Alpha. The relationship with Seth and Leah as betas was so worth reading. The way Jacob warms up to the Cullens is so satisfying to read.
Seth's relationship with the Cullens have always been friendly but I liked how much more of it we got to see and Leah's restrictions maintained a balance.
Leah being the only ever female werewolf to exist in the Twilight world is something I wish Stephenie Meyer would've handled better. I would still LOVE for a spin off series for the wolves.
The pregnancy was meh. I'm not a fan of the pregnancy trope and this book might be the reason why. It robbed me off the Edward- Bella moments. I know I'm being petty but it is what it is 😂🙈 Rosalie and Bella's budding friendship was a nice change tho. The birth scene was so INTENSE, it still gives me chills every time I read it. I'm so glad Meyer didn't end it on a cliffhanger and made us wait for the next book - that would've been devastating.
Part 3- Bella
So her newborn experience was AMAZING. She was born to be a vampire and that showed. Bella's character felt so much lighter, easy going and it brought so much color to her personality.
But this the part where I find most of my flaws. Firstly let me address the name- Renesmee Carlie Cullen- it's a buzzkill. I get it Meyer was trying to be sentimental but I gagged.
Secondly, the imprinting- Jacob didn't need anyone. He was doing fine on his own. There was no need for him to get a love interest especially one that just came out of Bella's womb looking like Annabelle from the Conjuring!! The imprinting IS so problematic on many levels and I don't see how there are people justifying it. Meyer could've written a spin off series and then Jacob could've imprinted on someone his own age, or close to his age. This whole imprinting part is something I try very hard to forget about. Thirdly, I don't think that Alice leaving and the whole J. Jenks thing made much sense. It was a whole "what if" scenario.
Moving on, I wish the conflict with the Volturi could've been darker. The movies did it better. But that's not something worth complaining about. I loved how Bella's supernatural gift as being a shield was utilised. It was badass. Something underrated about the third part is- Charlie and Bella's relationship. Charlie is such a good father, he should be protected at all costs🥺
You know that list that's at the end of the book (made by Jacob), it irks me how there's not an asterisk on Emmett's name. It's something very petty but it does bother me🙈🙈
This was such a beautiful book to end an equally beautiful Saga. I still miss the characters so much🥺 It wasn't a perfect book or a perfect series, but it's quite lovable. I didn't want it to end but glad I have Midnight Sun to satisfy my Edward heart.
April 2, 2012
****For you dumbasses people that look up to Bella Swan and think she's an inspiration (if such people exist in the world), read this:
12 Things That The Twilight Series Taught Me
1. It's okay to abandon your parents after graduation (literally)
2. When a vampire wants to kill you, hide out on a mountain and run for your life while your boyfriend's family fight to protect you.
3. It is the most romantic and beautiful thing in the world when a guy you barely know oils your bedroom window to watch you sleep when you don't even know it.
4. Beg your boyfriend to screw you over after he asks you to marry him
5. If your boyfriend leaves you forever, it is perfectly understandable to give up on life and stop living. There is no hope of you moving on, so what's the point of existing in the world?
6. When you have two guys fight over you, choose the more perfect, beautiful, flawless one (For me, he's a possessive, controlling asshole). Do not, under any cost, choose the less beautiful, flawed guy.
7. It's okay not to have any aspirations, dreams, and goals for the future. When you have a hot sexy vampire boyfriend, it's okay to give up a promising future to be with him instead.
8. Make friends at school and then literally ignore them and pretend they don't exist. After all, your life centers around only your smokin' boyfriend.
9. When you fall in love with someone for their physical attributes or because they smell good, it is considered beautiful, undying, irreversible love.
10. If your precious gem of a boyfriend leaves you, it is alright to become an adrenaline junky, manipulate your friend into helping you conjure up hallucinations, and jump off a cliff months later.
11. Kiss your best friend in front of your fiance after repeatedly saying you don't have feelings for him.
(Saved the best for last)
12. Vampires. Sparkle.
You still love Meyer?
Update: There was this crazy Twilight fangirl the other day who was like," I want to jump off a bridge to meet Edward." Meyer, do you see what you have done?? Your venom spreaded pretty far. You Edward lovers still think the Twilight series is amazing?
12 Things That The Twilight Series Taught Me
1. It's okay to abandon your parents after graduation (literally)
2. When a vampire wants to kill you, hide out on a mountain and run for your life while your boyfriend's family fight to protect you.
3. It is the most romantic and beautiful thing in the world when a guy you barely know oils your bedroom window to watch you sleep when you don't even know it.
4. Beg your boyfriend to screw you over after he asks you to marry him
5. If your boyfriend leaves you forever, it is perfectly understandable to give up on life and stop living. There is no hope of you moving on, so what's the point of existing in the world?
6. When you have two guys fight over you, choose the more perfect, beautiful, flawless one (For me, he's a possessive, controlling asshole). Do not, under any cost, choose the less beautiful, flawed guy.
7. It's okay not to have any aspirations, dreams, and goals for the future. When you have a hot sexy vampire boyfriend, it's okay to give up a promising future to be with him instead.
8. Make friends at school and then literally ignore them and pretend they don't exist. After all, your life centers around only your smokin' boyfriend.
9. When you fall in love with someone for their physical attributes or because they smell good, it is considered beautiful, undying, irreversible love.
10. If your precious gem of a boyfriend leaves you, it is alright to become an adrenaline junky, manipulate your friend into helping you conjure up hallucinations, and jump off a cliff months later.
11. Kiss your best friend in front of your fiance after repeatedly saying you don't have feelings for him.
(Saved the best for last)
12. Vampires. Sparkle.
You still love Meyer?
Update: There was this crazy Twilight fangirl the other day who was like," I want to jump off a bridge to meet Edward." Meyer, do you see what you have done?? Your venom spreaded pretty far. You Edward lovers still think the Twilight series is amazing?
Read
October 13, 2011This is a direct quote from Seth, Stephenie Meyer's brother and the person who runs her website.
"In an attempt to keep the books clean and not make young girls think about things that they don't need to think about, no other book mentioned anything about reproductive systems."
Hear that, girls?
You're not supposed to think about things.
Especially not sex.
Don't think about sex. Ever.
Or you will be thinking about things you shouldn't be thinking about.
Don't think about boys. Thinking about boys leads to thinking about holding hands and kissing, which leads to thinking about sex, which is bad.
Don't wonder about how babies are made and don't ever wonder where you came from. Clearly you popped out of your mother's vajayjay the instant your parents thought about having a child, like in The Sims 1. No sex involved.
Don't wonder if your parents still have sex. (Newsflash: most parents keep having sex after their kids are born).
And girls, especially don't think about other girls in the way you should be thinking about boys. I mean... don't think about boys in that way, either. If you must think about the thing you're not supposed to think about, it should be about boys. But still, don't think about it.
In fact, don't even read these books, because they include boys, and a girl who tries to seduce a boy who - like all good boys - won't do that thing you're not allowed to think about with her. Because he's the perfect boy. But don't think about him.
Because you don't need to think about sex. You don't need to be prepared. You don't need to know about protection. You don't need to know that some boys only want you for the feelings the magic baby-maker between your legs gives him. This whole 'sex' thing? It just happens. Magically. And it doesn't hurt and you'll never regret it and you'll be happy and content forever.
But, uh... don't think about that. You don't need to know about it.
And when that baby pops out nine months later (not like a week, which we have been led to believe) and you don't turn into a vampire, don't be disappointed. When you struggle to be a young single mum with a baby that actually takes work to look after and you're not an OMGAMAZINGGODDESSVAMPIRE supermodel, remember: you're not supposed to think about it.
And for god's sake, don't read these books and then fantasise about having sex with the boy, because even though Meyer wrote him to be the 'perfect' boy, and he's based on one of her own wet dreams, and she has been quoted as saying if Edward or Jacob showed up on her doorstep she would leave her loving husband and three children for either one of them... remember: SEX IS BAD. DON'T THINK ABOUT IT.
"In an attempt to keep the books clean and not make young girls think about things that they don't need to think about, no other book mentioned anything about reproductive systems."
Hear that, girls?
You're not supposed to think about things.
Especially not sex.
Don't think about sex. Ever.
Or you will be thinking about things you shouldn't be thinking about.
Don't think about boys. Thinking about boys leads to thinking about holding hands and kissing, which leads to thinking about sex, which is bad.
Don't wonder about how babies are made and don't ever wonder where you came from. Clearly you popped out of your mother's vajayjay the instant your parents thought about having a child, like in The Sims 1. No sex involved.
Don't wonder if your parents still have sex. (Newsflash: most parents keep having sex after their kids are born).
And girls, especially don't think about other girls in the way you should be thinking about boys. I mean... don't think about boys in that way, either. If you must think about the thing you're not supposed to think about, it should be about boys. But still, don't think about it.
In fact, don't even read these books, because they include boys, and a girl who tries to seduce a boy who - like all good boys - won't do that thing you're not allowed to think about with her. Because he's the perfect boy. But don't think about him.
Because you don't need to think about sex. You don't need to be prepared. You don't need to know about protection. You don't need to know that some boys only want you for the feelings the magic baby-maker between your legs gives him. This whole 'sex' thing? It just happens. Magically. And it doesn't hurt and you'll never regret it and you'll be happy and content forever.
But, uh... don't think about that. You don't need to know about it.
And when that baby pops out nine months later (not like a week, which we have been led to believe) and you don't turn into a vampire, don't be disappointed. When you struggle to be a young single mum with a baby that actually takes work to look after and you're not an OMGAMAZINGGODDESSVAMPIRE supermodel, remember: you're not supposed to think about it.
And for god's sake, don't read these books and then fantasise about having sex with the boy, because even though Meyer wrote him to be the 'perfect' boy, and he's based on one of her own wet dreams, and she has been quoted as saying if Edward or Jacob showed up on her doorstep she would leave her loving husband and three children for either one of them... remember: SEX IS BAD. DON'T THINK ABOUT IT.
September 18, 2024
You know... I don't even care that this series is so shitted on.😅 I LOVED it so damn much. And you know what - I couldn't wait from the very first page for Bella to become a vamp- I LIVED FOR IT!
Any other rats on here? 🐀🐀🐀
Any other rats on here? 🐀🐀🐀
July 26, 2012
Breaking Dawn just might be one of the worst books I have ever read. Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse can stand together as a fairly pleasing, lovable trio. Breaking Dawn seems almost unrelated to the series, like some crazed, over-the-top fan fiction. In the first three books, Stephenie Meyer creates this world of seemingly realistic magic – realistic because it is bound by explainable rules, and the characters within the world have retainable qualities from book to book. Though New Moon shows how utterly weak and pathetic Bella is sans Edward, it seems a natural progression of her needy personality that was introduced during the development of their relationship in Twilight. It seems as if in Breaking Dawn, Stephenie Meyer ran out of ideas for her characters or else decided to completely remake them and ignore the logistics she created for these magical creatures. It might as well have been named Breaking Rules.
First let’s start off with Bella’s personality. Though her aversion to the wedding ceremony is over-done and her self-deprecating attitude by this point is impossibly trite, it seems like the classic Bella. By the time she finishes her honeymoon with Edward, she has gone from being this average teenager who is in love enough to marry her boyfriend but doesn’t want to jump into a marriage for fear of being thought of as “small-town”, to a married, pregnant eighteen year old who is so intent upon keeping her incubus child that she is willing to die so that the thing can live. Oh, and she has also become somewhat reminiscent of a crazed sex-addict. She is annoyed that Edward wants to go out and explore the island with her, snorkeling and hiking and doing fun activities. She would rather just stay in the house and have sex all day, every day, for weeks at a time. That’s disgusting. Also defying any sort of logic is the fact that once she realizes she might be pregnant, it is confirmed by the fact that her stomach has a little bulge and she feels the baby kick. The five-day-old embryo. Right. It’s almost like Stephenie Meyer wanted to stuff five years of normal life into Edward and Bella’s magical existence for the sake of not having to write a fifth book. Although Bella’s pregnancy was a surprise to the vampire world, the event seemed utterly contrived. By the time I finished reading the honeymoon scene, I was having to shut the book to collect myself. I felt my mind had been violated, like Stephenie Meyer had just mind-raped me through nearly 100 pages. I had to force myself to continue reading. It only got worse.
I was annoyed that Stephenie decided to use a whole third of the book for Jacob’s perspective. What sort of structure is that? It’s just a lame excuse to develop the plot from an easier angle. It’s a total cop-out. Why even write a version of Twilight from Edward’s perspective if you can just throw in alternate perspectives wherever it makes things easier? Once Bella becomes pregnant, she ceases to be Bella. We see most of the pregnancy through Jacob’s eyes, and Bella’s stubbornness is annoying. I didn’t even feel compassion or sympathy for her. Edward speaks of it as a “thing”, Carlisle is afraid of it, they say it’s an incubus and not even a real infant, that it eats its way out of its mother’s womb, and yet Bella wants it, is willing to die for it. What? Since when did Bella want to be a mom? Since when did she not care about the whole “small town” image? She doesn’t seem to see how this child could complicate her life, much less end it. Plus, the thing grows at an alarming rate. Within a week or two, Bella’s stomach is large enough that she “cradles it” in her arms. This image disgusted me. First of all, I would rather not imagine a pregnant 18 year old, married or not. Second of all, the logistics of it bother me. Like oh, of course she gets through 9 months of pregnancy in roughly four weeks. Way to go Stephenie, it’s obvious you’re not anxious to speed the plot along or anything. Plus, with Bella’s personality it seems like she would have a hard time wrapping her head around the idea of impending motherhood, let alone be absolutely ready for it in four weeks’ time.
Then the birth – grotesque, disgusting. Edward biting open Bella’s womb to free the child. Um, sick? I can only hope the movie version of this saga ends with Twilight. I can't imagine them trying to dilute the honeymoon scene, let alone the birthing scene. I can just picture the awkward energy radiating in the theatre during a movie like this. I wouldn't be surprised if there were nothing but crickets at the end, moviegoers awkwardly shuffling out of the theatre, avoiding eye contact with those they came with. But moving on, how about the lovely celebrity-coupleish name they burden her with? Renesmee. Gag me. I wonder what Stephenie Meyer was even thinking. And to further her perverted, illogical tirade, Stephenie has Jacob imprint on the infant Renesmee. Wow, didn’t see that one coming. Of course, how perfect for Bella. She can have Jacob in her life AND have him be happy. Wow. Applause. Great solution. Not. I would rather he imprinted on Leah. That would have made much more sense.
Once Bella becomes a vampire, she continues to remain the exception to every rule while being utterly oblivious to the fact. Bella! You’re so under control! Really? I am? What? Bella! You are unusually graceful! Really? Was that jump good? Bella! Your mind can block everything out, you have super powers! And oh, you can conveniently use them to protect the ones you love! Really? Is that good? Am I being modest enough? Gag me. How convenient to the plot that Bella can skip over all the newborn vampire nonsense and just be herself. How convenient that her passions for Edward only intensify. Who needs human experiences? How convenient that Charlie gets to know the Cullens are not human. How convenient that he happily accepts that two months after giving his daughter away, he already has a grandchild the size of a 3 year old. Right. Because infant Renesmee is not nearly as interesting or cute as talking toddler Renesmee who appears to be a baby Einstein that prefers to “show” her thoughts rather than speak them. And suddenly Bella has the mental maturity of a 30 year old mother though she’s still an 18 year old who got pregnant four months ago and has a daughter who is progressing at least 5 times as fast as a normal infant. The whole plot line reminded me of a child who got bored playing the same old story with her Barbies and suddenly decided that Barbie and Ken were going to have a baby, and that baby was born and became a functioning member of the family within two minutes of play time.
I was a little hopeful when the Volturi arrived for what seemed to be an inevitable war. I recalled back to when Bella mentioned something about not being able to imagine the Cullens without their head, Carlisle. I thought for sure Carlisle would make some ultimate sacrifice to save Edward and Bella. At least one major casualty would have breathed some feeling into this book other than “everything is perfect because Bella and Edward defy every bit of logic.” But no. In true predictable fashion, Alice returns and saves the day. Bella grows some balls and radiates her “shield” over everyone. Pathetic Bella, the damsel in distress, the one who always had to be protected and saved, now the one protecting and saving everyone else. How convenient. No fighting occurs, Renesmee is assured a life of immortality and will conveniently grow up extra fast for Jacob. Bella and Edward live to have more sex. Everyone lives happily ever after.
First let’s start off with Bella’s personality. Though her aversion to the wedding ceremony is over-done and her self-deprecating attitude by this point is impossibly trite, it seems like the classic Bella. By the time she finishes her honeymoon with Edward, she has gone from being this average teenager who is in love enough to marry her boyfriend but doesn’t want to jump into a marriage for fear of being thought of as “small-town”, to a married, pregnant eighteen year old who is so intent upon keeping her incubus child that she is willing to die so that the thing can live. Oh, and she has also become somewhat reminiscent of a crazed sex-addict. She is annoyed that Edward wants to go out and explore the island with her, snorkeling and hiking and doing fun activities. She would rather just stay in the house and have sex all day, every day, for weeks at a time. That’s disgusting. Also defying any sort of logic is the fact that once she realizes she might be pregnant, it is confirmed by the fact that her stomach has a little bulge and she feels the baby kick. The five-day-old embryo. Right. It’s almost like Stephenie Meyer wanted to stuff five years of normal life into Edward and Bella’s magical existence for the sake of not having to write a fifth book. Although Bella’s pregnancy was a surprise to the vampire world, the event seemed utterly contrived. By the time I finished reading the honeymoon scene, I was having to shut the book to collect myself. I felt my mind had been violated, like Stephenie Meyer had just mind-raped me through nearly 100 pages. I had to force myself to continue reading. It only got worse.
I was annoyed that Stephenie decided to use a whole third of the book for Jacob’s perspective. What sort of structure is that? It’s just a lame excuse to develop the plot from an easier angle. It’s a total cop-out. Why even write a version of Twilight from Edward’s perspective if you can just throw in alternate perspectives wherever it makes things easier? Once Bella becomes pregnant, she ceases to be Bella. We see most of the pregnancy through Jacob’s eyes, and Bella’s stubbornness is annoying. I didn’t even feel compassion or sympathy for her. Edward speaks of it as a “thing”, Carlisle is afraid of it, they say it’s an incubus and not even a real infant, that it eats its way out of its mother’s womb, and yet Bella wants it, is willing to die for it. What? Since when did Bella want to be a mom? Since when did she not care about the whole “small town” image? She doesn’t seem to see how this child could complicate her life, much less end it. Plus, the thing grows at an alarming rate. Within a week or two, Bella’s stomach is large enough that she “cradles it” in her arms. This image disgusted me. First of all, I would rather not imagine a pregnant 18 year old, married or not. Second of all, the logistics of it bother me. Like oh, of course she gets through 9 months of pregnancy in roughly four weeks. Way to go Stephenie, it’s obvious you’re not anxious to speed the plot along or anything. Plus, with Bella’s personality it seems like she would have a hard time wrapping her head around the idea of impending motherhood, let alone be absolutely ready for it in four weeks’ time.
Then the birth – grotesque, disgusting. Edward biting open Bella’s womb to free the child. Um, sick? I can only hope the movie version of this saga ends with Twilight. I can't imagine them trying to dilute the honeymoon scene, let alone the birthing scene. I can just picture the awkward energy radiating in the theatre during a movie like this. I wouldn't be surprised if there were nothing but crickets at the end, moviegoers awkwardly shuffling out of the theatre, avoiding eye contact with those they came with. But moving on, how about the lovely celebrity-coupleish name they burden her with? Renesmee. Gag me. I wonder what Stephenie Meyer was even thinking. And to further her perverted, illogical tirade, Stephenie has Jacob imprint on the infant Renesmee. Wow, didn’t see that one coming. Of course, how perfect for Bella. She can have Jacob in her life AND have him be happy. Wow. Applause. Great solution. Not. I would rather he imprinted on Leah. That would have made much more sense.
Once Bella becomes a vampire, she continues to remain the exception to every rule while being utterly oblivious to the fact. Bella! You’re so under control! Really? I am? What? Bella! You are unusually graceful! Really? Was that jump good? Bella! Your mind can block everything out, you have super powers! And oh, you can conveniently use them to protect the ones you love! Really? Is that good? Am I being modest enough? Gag me. How convenient to the plot that Bella can skip over all the newborn vampire nonsense and just be herself. How convenient that her passions for Edward only intensify. Who needs human experiences? How convenient that Charlie gets to know the Cullens are not human. How convenient that he happily accepts that two months after giving his daughter away, he already has a grandchild the size of a 3 year old. Right. Because infant Renesmee is not nearly as interesting or cute as talking toddler Renesmee who appears to be a baby Einstein that prefers to “show” her thoughts rather than speak them. And suddenly Bella has the mental maturity of a 30 year old mother though she’s still an 18 year old who got pregnant four months ago and has a daughter who is progressing at least 5 times as fast as a normal infant. The whole plot line reminded me of a child who got bored playing the same old story with her Barbies and suddenly decided that Barbie and Ken were going to have a baby, and that baby was born and became a functioning member of the family within two minutes of play time.
I was a little hopeful when the Volturi arrived for what seemed to be an inevitable war. I recalled back to when Bella mentioned something about not being able to imagine the Cullens without their head, Carlisle. I thought for sure Carlisle would make some ultimate sacrifice to save Edward and Bella. At least one major casualty would have breathed some feeling into this book other than “everything is perfect because Bella and Edward defy every bit of logic.” But no. In true predictable fashion, Alice returns and saves the day. Bella grows some balls and radiates her “shield” over everyone. Pathetic Bella, the damsel in distress, the one who always had to be protected and saved, now the one protecting and saving everyone else. How convenient. No fighting occurs, Renesmee is assured a life of immortality and will conveniently grow up extra fast for Jacob. Bella and Edward live to have more sex. Everyone lives happily ever after.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 6, 2021
this series would have been 100% better if Bella and Alice ended up together
January 1, 2022
Here we are at the very end of the series, THANK FUCK ITS ENDED.
Now you may be thinking: Zoe, how could Twilight get any worse?
I am about to go on for a good 3 pages and tell you exactly how.
SOME SHIT WENT DOWNNN IN THIS BOOK SO I HAVE A LOT TO COMPLAIN ABOUT!!!
Warning: There will be spoilers and swearing in this review.
I'm sure you already know their names but if ya dont here ya go:
Edward: Mr Light Bulb. Because apparently vampires sparkle in the sun now instead of burning?
Bella: Little Miss Dumb: Because well aparently someone who wants you for your blood is attractive? Hmph, I don’t think so.
Jacob: Fuzz balls: I don’t think I need to explain.
Soooooooooooooooo, this book is exactly 754 pages of me laughing at how amazing Stepheine Meyer is for thinking all of this is a good idea.
Yes, I counted! OK! YOUR WELCOME!!
SOOOOOOOOOOOOO. SOME SHIT GOES DOWN IN THIS BOOK AND WOWEE DOES IT GET ON MY NERVES.
So, Little Miss Dumb and Light Bulb are getting married *crowd cheers*
AND SHE IS 18 YEARS OLD MARRYING AN OLD MAN IN A TEENAGERS BODY *crowd boos*
HOW IN THE WORLD HER FATHER AND HER MOTHER ARE OK WITH THAT IS WAYYYYY OVER MY HEAD.
AND SOOOO THEY get married ALL BECAUSE SHE WANTS TO DIE AND THEN COME BACK ALIVE FOR HIM
SOOOOOOO THEN THEY GET MARRIED AND OFF THEY GO ON THEIR HONEYMOON.
HOW TF DID HER DAD AGREE TO THIS??!!
Anyways they go off on their HONEYMOON and DO THE DEVILS TANGO. *EVIL LAUGH*
Not even a DAY after they do the devils tango she eats some chicken and vomits. NOT THINKING IT COULD BE UNDERCOOKED OR MAYBE IT WAS FOOD POISONING. She's like ‘OH SHIT I'M PREGNANT’. BRO THE SWIMMERS CAN’T SWIM THAT FAST. CALM TF DOWN.
Now you might be wondering WHY she thinks that a human girl can get pregnant from AN IMMORTAL SPARKLING VAMPIRE?!?!!!!????
ANDDDD THEN Light Bulb goes into shock AND TURNS INTO AHUMAN VAMPIRE ROCK!!!
Then DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN they go home and Carlile is like MISS DUMB IS PREGNANT FOR REALS
Then Miss Dumb DOESNT TELL HER DAD SHE IS PREGNANT.
THEN WE GET SO LONG OF HER BEING PREGNANT AND THE BABYS A VAMPIRE SO SHE DRINKS BLOOD *Vomits* AND SHE LIKES IT AND DRINKS IT LIKE I DRINK MY COFFEE.
THEN SHE GETS SO FAT FROM THE BABY BUT DOESN’T GIVE UP BC ITS SPESHUL AND NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS.
Like mother like daughter
AND THEN HER SPINE BREAKS AND WHILE IN A ROOM FULL OF BLOODSUCKERS SHE GIVES BIRTH TO A HUMAN/VAMPIRE
AND NO ONE KILLS HER OR THE BABY
Talk about unrealistic.
AND THEN SHE DIES (DUN DUN DUN)
BUT WAIT, VAMPIRES CAN BRING HER BACK TO LIFE
SO LIGHT BULB BITES HER (admit it buddy you’ve always wanted to eat her like a snack)
And she sleepspeacefully painfully.
Then she awakes and SHE HAS RED EYES.
And they go for a run (pretty dumb for a newborn vampire)
And Miss Dumbs like: OMFG I LOVE BEING DEAD!!!!
I can run FAST
I can SMELL HOW BAD EVERYONE IS
I look even paler (if that's possible)
AND NOW I CRAVE BLOOD
Anddddddd, she smells fresh blood from a rock climber and is like DANG I NEED A TASTE OF THAT FRESH YUMMMMMYYYYY BLOOD.
BUT WAIT BECAUSE SHE IS SPESHUL AND IS NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS SHE RESISTS JUST BECOMING A VAMPIRE AND RUNS AWAY FROM FRESH BLOOD.
ANDDD THEN SHE:
Beats Emmet in a hand restle
And nearly kills Fuzz Balls
Now you are probably thinking, where has Fuzz Balls been this whole time?
Well remember when Bella gave birth to her child?
AND YESSS THE NAME IS RENESMEE (BISHHHHH what name is that????!!!!)
And then remember when she was in a coma after Light Bulbs venom got rid of her humanity?
Well yea, that whole time, Fuzz Balls was adoring Bellas daughter and IMPRINTED ON HER (AKA making her his mate)
Yes, THE WHOLE REASON FUZZ BALLS WAS ATTRACTED TO BELLA BECAUSE THERE WAS ONE EGG INSIDE OF BELLA THAT HE WAS GONNA IMPRINT ON
And because of that we get the iconic line “YOU IMPRINTED ON MY DAUGHTER!??!?!”
And “ YOU NAMED MY DAUGHTER AFTER THE LOCH-NESS MONSTER?!?!?”
And then the happy couple get into a fight with the vampire baby government bc there daughter is illegal. And there is this whole fight lalalallalla. But I dont care about that.
So after all of that Miss Dumb and Light Bulb go off to a cabin because the family did not want to hear them do the devils tango because they can now do that without Light Bulb killing Miss Dumb.
This book was by FAR the worst out of all of them and I can’t believe I ever read this TWICE. Young Zoe was not a good Zoe.
PS. This is a five part series where me and one of my best friends write reviews about Twilight.
A big shout out to another one of my best friends TY for editing this mess of a review for me!!
Thank you for reading my review
*bows*
My review of Twilight
my review of New Moon
my review of Eclipse
my review of Breaking Dawn
Now you may be thinking: Zoe, how could Twilight get any worse?
I am about to go on for a good 3 pages and tell you exactly how.
SOME SHIT WENT DOWNNN IN THIS BOOK SO I HAVE A LOT TO COMPLAIN ABOUT!!!
Warning: There will be spoilers and swearing in this review.
I'm sure you already know their names but if ya dont here ya go:
Edward: Mr Light Bulb. Because apparently vampires sparkle in the sun now instead of burning?
Bella: Little Miss Dumb: Because well aparently someone who wants you for your blood is attractive? Hmph, I don’t think so.
Jacob: Fuzz balls: I don’t think I need to explain.
Soooooooooooooooo, this book is exactly 754 pages of me laughing at how amazing Stepheine Meyer is for thinking all of this is a good idea.
Yes, I counted! OK! YOUR WELCOME!!
SOOOOOOOOOOOOO. SOME SHIT GOES DOWN IN THIS BOOK AND WOWEE DOES IT GET ON MY NERVES.
So, Little Miss Dumb and Light Bulb are getting married *crowd cheers*
AND SHE IS 18 YEARS OLD MARRYING AN OLD MAN IN A TEENAGERS BODY *crowd boos*
HOW IN THE WORLD HER FATHER AND HER MOTHER ARE OK WITH THAT IS WAYYYYY OVER MY HEAD.
AND SOOOO THEY get married ALL BECAUSE SHE WANTS TO DIE AND THEN COME BACK ALIVE FOR HIM
SOOOOOOO THEN THEY GET MARRIED AND OFF THEY GO ON THEIR HONEYMOON.
HOW TF DID HER DAD AGREE TO THIS??!!
Anyways they go off on their HONEYMOON and DO THE DEVILS TANGO. *EVIL LAUGH*
Not even a DAY after they do the devils tango she eats some chicken and vomits. NOT THINKING IT COULD BE UNDERCOOKED OR MAYBE IT WAS FOOD POISONING. She's like ‘OH SHIT I'M PREGNANT’. BRO THE SWIMMERS CAN’T SWIM THAT FAST. CALM TF DOWN.
Now you might be wondering WHY she thinks that a human girl can get pregnant from AN IMMORTAL SPARKLING VAMPIRE?!?!!!!????
ANDDDD THEN Light Bulb goes into shock AND TURNS INTO A
Then DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN they go home and Carlile is like MISS DUMB IS PREGNANT FOR REALS
Then Miss Dumb DOESNT TELL HER DAD SHE IS PREGNANT.
THEN WE GET SO LONG OF HER BEING PREGNANT AND THE BABYS A VAMPIRE SO SHE DRINKS BLOOD *Vomits* AND SHE LIKES IT AND DRINKS IT LIKE I DRINK MY COFFEE.
THEN SHE GETS SO FAT FROM THE BABY BUT DOESN’T GIVE UP BC ITS SPESHUL AND NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS.
Like mother like daughter
AND THEN HER SPINE BREAKS AND WHILE IN A ROOM FULL OF BLOODSUCKERS SHE GIVES BIRTH TO A HUMAN/VAMPIRE
AND NO ONE KILLS HER OR THE BABY
Talk about unrealistic.
AND THEN SHE DIES (DUN DUN DUN)
BUT WAIT, VAMPIRES CAN BRING HER BACK TO LIFE
SO LIGHT BULB BITES HER (admit it buddy you’ve always wanted to eat her like a snack)
And she sleeps
Then she awakes and SHE HAS RED EYES.
And they go for a run (pretty dumb for a newborn vampire)
And Miss Dumbs like: OMFG I LOVE BEING DEAD!!!!
I can run FAST
I can SMELL HOW BAD EVERYONE IS
I look even paler (if that's possible)
AND NOW I CRAVE BLOOD
Anddddddd, she smells fresh blood from a rock climber and is like DANG I NEED A TASTE OF THAT FRESH YUMMMMMYYYYY BLOOD.
BUT WAIT BECAUSE SHE IS SPESHUL AND IS NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS SHE RESISTS JUST BECOMING A VAMPIRE AND RUNS AWAY FROM FRESH BLOOD.
ANDDD THEN SHE:
Beats Emmet in a hand restle
And nearly kills Fuzz Balls
Now you are probably thinking, where has Fuzz Balls been this whole time?
Well remember when Bella gave birth to her child?
AND YESSS THE NAME IS RENESMEE (BISHHHHH what name is that????!!!!)
And then remember when she was in a coma after Light Bulbs venom got rid of her humanity?
Well yea, that whole time, Fuzz Balls was adoring Bellas daughter and IMPRINTED ON HER (AKA making her his mate)
Yes, THE WHOLE REASON FUZZ BALLS WAS ATTRACTED TO BELLA BECAUSE THERE WAS ONE EGG INSIDE OF BELLA THAT HE WAS GONNA IMPRINT ON
And because of that we get the iconic line “YOU IMPRINTED ON MY DAUGHTER!??!?!”
And “ YOU NAMED MY DAUGHTER AFTER THE LOCH-NESS MONSTER?!?!?”
And then the happy couple get into a fight with the vampire baby government bc there daughter is illegal. And there is this whole fight lalalallalla. But I dont care about that.
So after all of that Miss Dumb and Light Bulb go off to a cabin because the family did not want to hear them do the devils tango because they can now do that without Light Bulb killing Miss Dumb.
This book was by FAR the worst out of all of them and I can’t believe I ever read this TWICE. Young Zoe was not a good Zoe.
PS. This is a five part series where me and one of my best friends write reviews about Twilight.
A big shout out to another one of my best friends TY for editing this mess of a review for me!!
Thank you for reading my review
*bows*
My review of Twilight
my review of New Moon
my review of Eclipse
my review of Breaking Dawn
July 8, 2023
This book has always ended the story in a way that makes me feel happy and content. It brings a sense of satisfaction and warmth to my heart. It's back on my bookshelf until I need it again.
April 11, 2025
4 stars
2020 re-read My audio re-read of the Twilight Saga is completed with Breaking Dawn. I’m a little sad it’s over, but I was so happy I made the time to re-read these books. It’s been at least 7-8 years since the last time I re-read them and now I feel completely ready for Midnight Sun in a few weeks! This was my favorite audiobook of the 4 because it had a narrator for Jacob (who I loved) and I have gotten more used to the narrator for Bella, so that’s a win!
2020 re-read My audio re-read of the Twilight Saga is completed with Breaking Dawn. I’m a little sad it’s over, but I was so happy I made the time to re-read these books. It’s been at least 7-8 years since the last time I re-read them and now I feel completely ready for Midnight Sun in a few weeks! This was my favorite audiobook of the 4 because it had a narrator for Jacob (who I loved) and I have gotten more used to the narrator for Bella, so that’s a win!
October 18, 2025
I am shocked, dismayed, not surprised at all to discover from Usually Reliable Sources that the series has a happy ending. Let's recap. The story so far: Bella, a shy, bookish, unimaginative 17 year old girl who's never been kissed, falls in love with Edward, who once was human but has now been transformed, by means not fully explained in the books, into a robot-like being with an insatiable craving for blood. Edward tries to control every aspect of Bella's life, including stealing into her bedroom at night and watching over her while she sleeps. At one point, Edward leaves Bella abruptly, pushing her into a state of suicidal despair. He in fact believes, on rather slender evidence, that she has killed herself, and, rather than trying to find out whether she really is dead, decides to kill himself too. Bella, who has not died, is forced to risk her life a second time to save his.
While Edward was out of the picture, Bella has fallen in love with Jacob, who reciprocates her feelings. After she gets back together with Edward, she callously abandons Jacob, mirroring Edward's behavior towards her. Edward then cleverly manipulates both Bella and Jacob to destroy her relationship with the one person who truly loves and cares for her. He also uses Bella's feelings of sexual attraction towards him to trick her into marrying him, something Bella has made quite clear that she does not want to do. At the end of Book 3, Bella is being coerced into a wedding she hates the very idea of. Once they are married, Edward is going to turn her into a creature similar to himself. This means that she will also be a blood-craving robot, and will never be able to have children. It is also likely that their union will trigger a major war between Edward's and Jacob's families.
We are clearly being set up for a geek [Surely "Greek"? Ed.] tragedy, and a logical ending might have been something like the following. Bella's and Edward's wedding proceeds as planned under Alice's manic supervision. On their wedding night, Edward makes a last-ditch attempt to persuade Bella not to have sex with him while still human. She refuses, and holds him to his promise. The sex is excruciatingly painful and nearly fatal; in order to save her life, Edward is forced to turn Bella into a vampire there and then. As a new-born, Bella lacks all self-control. During the early hours of the morning, she sneaks out of the bridal suite, lured by an overwhelmingly enticing smell. The trail leads to her mother's room; evidently, Bella's delicious scent has been genetically inherited. She breaks down the door, and kills and eats Renee. Then, overcome by remorse, she flees alone into the wilderness.
Jacob hears about the ghastly events, and deduces what has happened. Edward has violated the terms of the werewolf/vampire treaty, and Jacob is also consumed by rage and jealousy. He summons the werewolf pack, and they attack the Cullen residence in force. Bella has realised, too late, that he will do this. She hastens to Forks, but arrives when the battle is already in full swing. Sam kills Carlisle and Esme, before himself being killed by Jasper. Edward and Jacob kill each other in single combat. Bella looks on, horrified and grief-stricken, but is powerless to intervene.
At this point, the Volturi arrive. It turns out that Bella, in her new vampire form, is no longer immune to the demonic Jane. Jane paralyzes her, and forces her to watch as the Volturi kill the remaining Cullens and werewolves. Finally, when everyone else lies dead and dismembered on the ground, Jane is kind enough to kill her too.
But, instead... no, I can't continue. What the hell, Stephenie Meyer is right! To show how whole-heartedly I embrace her solution, here's my improved ending to Hamlet. We join the action in the middle of the fencing match between Hamlet and Laertes from Act V, Scene 2.
HAMLET: I'll play this bout first; set it by awhile. Come.
They play
Another hit; what say you?
LAERTES: A touch, a touch, I do confess.
KING CLAUDIUS: Our son shall win.
A pause. Then:
LAERTES: I can't do it. It's wrong. I'm sorry, man.
He throws down the foil
LAERTES: Hamlet, you may be a vampire, but you're my friend.
HAMLET: You may be a werewolf, but I love you.
LAERTES and HAMLET embrace
GERTRUDE: I'll drink to that.
CLAUDIUS: Don't... ah, shit, too late.
Enter POLONIUS
POLONIUS: Fear not, I switched the cups.
HAMLET: Huh? But... you're dead. I killed you.
POLONIUS: Just a flesh wound. I thought it would be safer to be out of the picture for a while.
HAMLET: Gee, you're smarter than I thought. You'd have made a great father-in-law, if only...
Enter OPHELIA, carrying a MUTANT VAMPIRE BABY
OPHELIA: Hi honey! This is Renesmee. But I call her Nessie. You're her father.
HAMLET: Oh, uh... good. If only my own father were still...
CLAUDIUS wipes the makeup from his face, and we see he is really HAMLET'S FATHER in disguise
HAMLET: ... Dad?
HAMLET'S FATHER: Son!
They embrace
HAMLET: But...
HAMLET'S FATHER: I wanted to see if you really cared about me.
HAMLET: Um... I nearly stabbed you once when you were praying, you know.
HAMLET'S FATHER: I don't think that would have worked.
He opens his robes to reveal a Kevlar vest
HAMLET: Oh, wow, this is like... incredible. Group hug!
HAMLET, HAMLET'S FATHER, GERTRUDE, LAERTES, POLONIUS, OPHELIA and OPHELIA'S MUTANT VAMPIRE BABY all embrace
HORATIO: [who has somehow been left out] Why does the drum come hither?
March within. Enter FORTINBRAS, the English Ambassadors, and others.
FORTINBRAS: What is this sight?
HORATIO: Well may you ask. It's a long story.
He starts whispering in FORTINBRAS's ear. FORTINBRAS mimes astonishment, disbelief, outrage etc as the curtain falls.
FINIS
I suppose I'll still have to read it. But under protest, as one might say.
______________________
OK, I've read it, so now I'm speaking from a position of both knowledge and prejudice, rather than just prejudice. I hope everyone grasps the subtle distinction.
Well... the first two thirds aren't bad. Her technical writing skills have improved since Twilight, and the atmosphere was suitably menacing and creepy. She did a good job of maintaining the ambiguity, so that we weren't sure about how reliable Bella was as a narrator. I approved of the way she treated the sex during their honeymoon. Bella, who's usually so appallingly, prosaically circumstantial about the smallest details, suddenly can't remember a thing about it, although there are bruises all over her body and Edward is in shock about what he's done to her. You do wonder what's going on. Try as I will, I find it difficult to imagine how a human woman could ever enjoy sex with a cold, robot-like vampire. But they have mind-control powers, some of which (Jasper's, for example) work on Bella, so it's entirely possible that she's somehow being manipulated. And the following part, where the mutant child starts growing and sucking the life from her body, is effective too. Bella's utter irrationality is scary, as is the Alien-like thing inside her. The horrifying birth scene is one of Meyer's best passages.
But then... oh dear. If anything, my Hamlet parody understated the extent of the difficulties she runs into. I have nothing against the deus ex machina as a plot device. Heck, if it's good enough for Shakespeare and Molière, it's good enough for Stephenie Meyer. The problem here is that she's ignoring all the basic rules. To start off with, she doesn't just have one deus ex machina; she has at least two big ones (Jacob imprinting on Renesmee, and the sudden production of the other half-immortal), plus some smaller ones (Bella's new abilities as a shield, and the switch of position regarding werewolves).
Also, the deus ex machina is normally used at the end, not in the middle, and it works best in the context of a comedy. Think of Frank Oz's version of Little Shop of Horrors, one of my favorite black comedies. Having Seymour electrocute the Plant and live happily ever after with Audrey works fine. You know perfectly well that he's really been eaten, just as you know perfectly well that Tartuffe really ends with poor Orgon being turned out of his own home. Here, though, with the dei ex machina coming down like hail all through Part 3, you don't know what to think. She actually seems to believe in her illogical happy ending rather than just intending it ironically. All the dramatic tension disappears. It's such a waste of a great build-up.
And, before I go back to reading the conclusion of Mysterier, a final thought about the absurd vampire science. If I understand correctly, the hocus-pocus with the numbers of chromosomes in the different species is there to establish the validity of the key equation
Werewolf = 1/2(Human) + 1/2(Vampire)
If Renesmee weren't a kind of werewolf, Jacob wouldn't have been able to imprint on her. But did anyone stop to consider that you can rearrange the terms to get the following form?
Human = 2(Werewolf) - Vampire
I'll leave you to ponder the significance of that.
While Edward was out of the picture, Bella has fallen in love with Jacob, who reciprocates her feelings. After she gets back together with Edward, she callously abandons Jacob, mirroring Edward's behavior towards her. Edward then cleverly manipulates both Bella and Jacob to destroy her relationship with the one person who truly loves and cares for her. He also uses Bella's feelings of sexual attraction towards him to trick her into marrying him, something Bella has made quite clear that she does not want to do. At the end of Book 3, Bella is being coerced into a wedding she hates the very idea of. Once they are married, Edward is going to turn her into a creature similar to himself. This means that she will also be a blood-craving robot, and will never be able to have children. It is also likely that their union will trigger a major war between Edward's and Jacob's families.
We are clearly being set up for a geek [Surely "Greek"? Ed.] tragedy, and a logical ending might have been something like the following. Bella's and Edward's wedding proceeds as planned under Alice's manic supervision. On their wedding night, Edward makes a last-ditch attempt to persuade Bella not to have sex with him while still human. She refuses, and holds him to his promise. The sex is excruciatingly painful and nearly fatal; in order to save her life, Edward is forced to turn Bella into a vampire there and then. As a new-born, Bella lacks all self-control. During the early hours of the morning, she sneaks out of the bridal suite, lured by an overwhelmingly enticing smell. The trail leads to her mother's room; evidently, Bella's delicious scent has been genetically inherited. She breaks down the door, and kills and eats Renee. Then, overcome by remorse, she flees alone into the wilderness.
Jacob hears about the ghastly events, and deduces what has happened. Edward has violated the terms of the werewolf/vampire treaty, and Jacob is also consumed by rage and jealousy. He summons the werewolf pack, and they attack the Cullen residence in force. Bella has realised, too late, that he will do this. She hastens to Forks, but arrives when the battle is already in full swing. Sam kills Carlisle and Esme, before himself being killed by Jasper. Edward and Jacob kill each other in single combat. Bella looks on, horrified and grief-stricken, but is powerless to intervene.
At this point, the Volturi arrive. It turns out that Bella, in her new vampire form, is no longer immune to the demonic Jane. Jane paralyzes her, and forces her to watch as the Volturi kill the remaining Cullens and werewolves. Finally, when everyone else lies dead and dismembered on the ground, Jane is kind enough to kill her too.
But, instead... no, I can't continue. What the hell, Stephenie Meyer is right! To show how whole-heartedly I embrace her solution, here's my improved ending to Hamlet. We join the action in the middle of the fencing match between Hamlet and Laertes from Act V, Scene 2.
HAMLET: I'll play this bout first; set it by awhile. Come.
They play
Another hit; what say you?
LAERTES: A touch, a touch, I do confess.
KING CLAUDIUS: Our son shall win.
A pause. Then:
LAERTES: I can't do it. It's wrong. I'm sorry, man.
He throws down the foil
LAERTES: Hamlet, you may be a vampire, but you're my friend.
HAMLET: You may be a werewolf, but I love you.
LAERTES and HAMLET embrace
GERTRUDE: I'll drink to that.
CLAUDIUS: Don't... ah, shit, too late.
Enter POLONIUS
POLONIUS: Fear not, I switched the cups.
HAMLET: Huh? But... you're dead. I killed you.
POLONIUS: Just a flesh wound. I thought it would be safer to be out of the picture for a while.
HAMLET: Gee, you're smarter than I thought. You'd have made a great father-in-law, if only...
Enter OPHELIA, carrying a MUTANT VAMPIRE BABY
OPHELIA: Hi honey! This is Renesmee. But I call her Nessie. You're her father.
HAMLET: Oh, uh... good. If only my own father were still...
CLAUDIUS wipes the makeup from his face, and we see he is really HAMLET'S FATHER in disguise
HAMLET: ... Dad?
HAMLET'S FATHER: Son!
They embrace
HAMLET: But...
HAMLET'S FATHER: I wanted to see if you really cared about me.
HAMLET: Um... I nearly stabbed you once when you were praying, you know.
HAMLET'S FATHER: I don't think that would have worked.
He opens his robes to reveal a Kevlar vest
HAMLET: Oh, wow, this is like... incredible. Group hug!
HAMLET, HAMLET'S FATHER, GERTRUDE, LAERTES, POLONIUS, OPHELIA and OPHELIA'S MUTANT VAMPIRE BABY all embrace
HORATIO: [who has somehow been left out] Why does the drum come hither?
March within. Enter FORTINBRAS, the English Ambassadors, and others.
FORTINBRAS: What is this sight?
HORATIO: Well may you ask. It's a long story.
He starts whispering in FORTINBRAS's ear. FORTINBRAS mimes astonishment, disbelief, outrage etc as the curtain falls.
FINIS
I suppose I'll still have to read it. But under protest, as one might say.
______________________
OK, I've read it, so now I'm speaking from a position of both knowledge and prejudice, rather than just prejudice. I hope everyone grasps the subtle distinction.
Well... the first two thirds aren't bad. Her technical writing skills have improved since Twilight, and the atmosphere was suitably menacing and creepy. She did a good job of maintaining the ambiguity, so that we weren't sure about how reliable Bella was as a narrator. I approved of the way she treated the sex during their honeymoon. Bella, who's usually so appallingly, prosaically circumstantial about the smallest details, suddenly can't remember a thing about it, although there are bruises all over her body and Edward is in shock about what he's done to her. You do wonder what's going on. Try as I will, I find it difficult to imagine how a human woman could ever enjoy sex with a cold, robot-like vampire. But they have mind-control powers, some of which (Jasper's, for example) work on Bella, so it's entirely possible that she's somehow being manipulated. And the following part, where the mutant child starts growing and sucking the life from her body, is effective too. Bella's utter irrationality is scary, as is the Alien-like thing inside her. The horrifying birth scene is one of Meyer's best passages.
But then... oh dear. If anything, my Hamlet parody understated the extent of the difficulties she runs into. I have nothing against the deus ex machina as a plot device. Heck, if it's good enough for Shakespeare and Molière, it's good enough for Stephenie Meyer. The problem here is that she's ignoring all the basic rules. To start off with, she doesn't just have one deus ex machina; she has at least two big ones (Jacob imprinting on Renesmee, and the sudden production of the other half-immortal), plus some smaller ones (Bella's new abilities as a shield, and the switch of position regarding werewolves).
Also, the deus ex machina is normally used at the end, not in the middle, and it works best in the context of a comedy. Think of Frank Oz's version of Little Shop of Horrors, one of my favorite black comedies. Having Seymour electrocute the Plant and live happily ever after with Audrey works fine. You know perfectly well that he's really been eaten, just as you know perfectly well that Tartuffe really ends with poor Orgon being turned out of his own home. Here, though, with the dei ex machina coming down like hail all through Part 3, you don't know what to think. She actually seems to believe in her illogical happy ending rather than just intending it ironically. All the dramatic tension disappears. It's such a waste of a great build-up.
And, before I go back to reading the conclusion of Mysterier, a final thought about the absurd vampire science. If I understand correctly, the hocus-pocus with the numbers of chromosomes in the different species is there to establish the validity of the key equation
Werewolf = 1/2(Human) + 1/2(Vampire)
If Renesmee weren't a kind of werewolf, Jacob wouldn't have been able to imprint on her. But did anyone stop to consider that you can rearrange the terms to get the following form?
Human = 2(Werewolf) - Vampire
I'll leave you to ponder the significance of that.
October 5, 2008
Dear lord. "Didn't like it" is a terrible, terrible understatement. I cannot believe I wasted my time with this book. The deeper and deeper I got into the absurdness of it all, I realized what it reminded me of: a bad fan fiction.
Let's start with the *shudder*...pregnancy. GAH! GAH GAH GAH! What was Meyer THINKING, making it possible for Bella to be pregnant? What the hell was she thinking?
Now that I read Meyer's statements more carefully, I realize that she never actually said it was impossible for a male vampire to impregnate a human girl, just that a female vampire couldn't bear children. I guess we (the readers) just jumped to conclusions with that.
But regardless, I have never thought of Bella as particularly maternal. So imagine my surprise when the fried chicken she makes one day nauseates her! My reaction: "...No! It can't be! She can't be! It's impossible, damn it!"
And then when she realizes she's late, here's my reaction: "NOOOOOOOOOOO! NO! NO NO NO NO NO! WHAT THE HELL!"
Yes, it's that bad.
And then shortly after it goes into "Book Two," which is Jacob's point of view.
Now, I hated Jacob. Almost. I guess it was more dislike, since I don't usually hate things. But anyways, I was expecting his view to be boring and disappointing.
But as we got further into it, I started to have a better understanding of him. It was refreshing to get a glimpse into his mind, to see his feelings. I have always been one of Team Edward before now, so imagine my surprise when I realize that Jacob is now one of my favorite characters!
Seth and Leah are great characters too. Leah really developed--all she needed was to be able to push away from Sam. I have always liked Leah, truthfully. But even though I liked her, I could never truthfully say she had a great personality. Breaking Dawn changed that.
And in Jacob's point of view, we see how badly the pregnancy is affecting Bella--this is also a good part of the book. Too often in fan fiction I see pregnant!Bella having a blissful time. But the pain and misery of it in Breaking Dawn is absolutely wonderful. A new take on it, I thought, and my opinion of the book increased as I got to that part.
But then the book just HAS to go to Bella's point of view again. And shortly after she gives birth (also plenty of pain there), she is dying, and Edward has to change her into a vampire quickly. I can't say I like the circumstances for the change, but alright. Fine. But the disappointment comes during the change.
She mentions the pain, the monstrous fire that keeps licking at her skin and causing her pain at every moment. But she fails to describe it well--after a while, she's grown used to it. How exactly do you get used to being in a fire? I just don't get that. And one other fact--she stays still throughout the whole transformation. She should be screaming, thrashing about. How did she suddenly become this "strong, silent type?"
Don't worry...one of the biggest disappointments is yet to come.
She wakes up, and all her senses have been magnified: the entire world looks different. That's not the disappointment, though.
The big disappointment is that there is barely any mention of thirst. Know why? Because she has this super-self-control that allows her to completely skip the typical YEARS of savageness, the newborn stage! Yes, everyone. She is that awesome.
She has become a Mary-Sue. If you don't know what that is, go look it up on Wikipedia now.
Is that not enough to convince you of her Sue-ness? Well, as if that's not enough, a little later she discovers that she can protect people with her mind!
But that's for later. Right now, let's rewind a little bit.
Remember Bella's kid? Turns out it's a girl. What's her name?
Renesmee.
You heard right. Renesmee.
Try pronouncing that. I can think of a lot of mispronunciations: REEN-smee, REH-neh-smee, etc etc. Correct pronunciation: ruh-NEZ-may. Combo of Renee and Esme.
And as if that were not enough, she's nicknamed after the loch ness monster.
And as if THAT, were not enough, Jacob imprints on her.
Ugh. I mean, most of us want him to eventually get over Bella, right? But the way Meyer does it? It's like, POOF! The moment he sees Renesmee, Bella vanishes! She was never there!
It's laughable.
Using such an easy way of getting rid of Jacob. Ugh. Meyer could've at least spent time on the solution.
Meanwhile, a series of events which I don't feel like explaining happen which lead the Volturi to come to try to kill Nessie. Nessie is Renesmee, if you can't figure it out. Concerned, the Cullens gather seventeen other freaking vampires as witnesses. Don't ask me for what, I don't feel like explaining.
And obviously all of these vampires get along, even though most of them prey on humans and a whole neighborhood of them live a few miles away.
And as if that weren't enough, almost all of them have superpowers, completely deflating one of Meyer's earlier claims.
So here they are, all gathered, when suddenly the Volturi get convinced that Nessie is not a threat and they all leave peacefully--though not without killing Irina, who ratted all of them out but did so on a false claim.
And then they lived happily ever after.
Yes, that really happened. The title of the last chapter was even "Happily Ever After."
Personally, I would've liked to see a fight at the end.
But then, even after all this, you still say, "But at least Alice was there to make the story better, right?"
Well, no. She was barely there for anything. Which takes away a lot of the series' appeal.
And while we're on the topic of characters, may I also add that no one was acting in-character?
And while we're on the topic of out-of-character-ness, I would also like to say that Charlie found out about werewolves and that the Cullens weren't human (he doesn't know they're vampires, just that they aren't human), but guess what? He barely cares about it! Who would've thought?
Remember earlier, when I said this was like a bad fan fiction? Let's weigh all the characteristics.
Everything that happened in cliche fan fiction happened here, including:
- Pregnant Bella
- Stupid names
- OOC-ness (Out Of Character, if you can't figure it out)
- The commonness of gifted vampires
- Bella's self-control gift
- Two gifts for Bella
- Jacob imprinting
- Charlie knowing the secret
I'm sure there's more, but I don't want to think a lot.
Please don't read this.
August 30th, 2008 UPDATE:
Okay, so I've gotten over the initial shock of the book. I'm not going to write another review, because I'm still in denial that the book was actually okay. So I'm just going to say that I respect it. I'm never, ever going to like it, of course. But I respect it.
October 4th, 2008 UPDATE:
I changed my mind. I hate this book again with a passion. I no longer respect it or Meyer.
Let's start with the *shudder*...pregnancy. GAH! GAH GAH GAH! What was Meyer THINKING, making it possible for Bella to be pregnant? What the hell was she thinking?
Now that I read Meyer's statements more carefully, I realize that she never actually said it was impossible for a male vampire to impregnate a human girl, just that a female vampire couldn't bear children. I guess we (the readers) just jumped to conclusions with that.
But regardless, I have never thought of Bella as particularly maternal. So imagine my surprise when the fried chicken she makes one day nauseates her! My reaction: "...No! It can't be! She can't be! It's impossible, damn it!"
And then when she realizes she's late, here's my reaction: "NOOOOOOOOOOO! NO! NO NO NO NO NO! WHAT THE HELL!"
Yes, it's that bad.
And then shortly after it goes into "Book Two," which is Jacob's point of view.
Now, I hated Jacob. Almost. I guess it was more dislike, since I don't usually hate things. But anyways, I was expecting his view to be boring and disappointing.
But as we got further into it, I started to have a better understanding of him. It was refreshing to get a glimpse into his mind, to see his feelings. I have always been one of Team Edward before now, so imagine my surprise when I realize that Jacob is now one of my favorite characters!
Seth and Leah are great characters too. Leah really developed--all she needed was to be able to push away from Sam. I have always liked Leah, truthfully. But even though I liked her, I could never truthfully say she had a great personality. Breaking Dawn changed that.
And in Jacob's point of view, we see how badly the pregnancy is affecting Bella--this is also a good part of the book. Too often in fan fiction I see pregnant!Bella having a blissful time. But the pain and misery of it in Breaking Dawn is absolutely wonderful. A new take on it, I thought, and my opinion of the book increased as I got to that part.
But then the book just HAS to go to Bella's point of view again. And shortly after she gives birth (also plenty of pain there), she is dying, and Edward has to change her into a vampire quickly. I can't say I like the circumstances for the change, but alright. Fine. But the disappointment comes during the change.
She mentions the pain, the monstrous fire that keeps licking at her skin and causing her pain at every moment. But she fails to describe it well--after a while, she's grown used to it. How exactly do you get used to being in a fire? I just don't get that. And one other fact--she stays still throughout the whole transformation. She should be screaming, thrashing about. How did she suddenly become this "strong, silent type?"
Don't worry...one of the biggest disappointments is yet to come.
She wakes up, and all her senses have been magnified: the entire world looks different. That's not the disappointment, though.
The big disappointment is that there is barely any mention of thirst. Know why? Because she has this super-self-control that allows her to completely skip the typical YEARS of savageness, the newborn stage! Yes, everyone. She is that awesome.
She has become a Mary-Sue. If you don't know what that is, go look it up on Wikipedia now.
Is that not enough to convince you of her Sue-ness? Well, as if that's not enough, a little later she discovers that she can protect people with her mind!
But that's for later. Right now, let's rewind a little bit.
Remember Bella's kid? Turns out it's a girl. What's her name?
Renesmee.
You heard right. Renesmee.
Try pronouncing that. I can think of a lot of mispronunciations: REEN-smee, REH-neh-smee, etc etc. Correct pronunciation: ruh-NEZ-may. Combo of Renee and Esme.
And as if that were not enough, she's nicknamed after the loch ness monster.
And as if THAT, were not enough, Jacob imprints on her.
Ugh. I mean, most of us want him to eventually get over Bella, right? But the way Meyer does it? It's like, POOF! The moment he sees Renesmee, Bella vanishes! She was never there!
It's laughable.
Using such an easy way of getting rid of Jacob. Ugh. Meyer could've at least spent time on the solution.
Meanwhile, a series of events which I don't feel like explaining happen which lead the Volturi to come to try to kill Nessie. Nessie is Renesmee, if you can't figure it out. Concerned, the Cullens gather seventeen other freaking vampires as witnesses. Don't ask me for what, I don't feel like explaining.
And obviously all of these vampires get along, even though most of them prey on humans and a whole neighborhood of them live a few miles away.
And as if that weren't enough, almost all of them have superpowers, completely deflating one of Meyer's earlier claims.
So here they are, all gathered, when suddenly the Volturi get convinced that Nessie is not a threat and they all leave peacefully--though not without killing Irina, who ratted all of them out but did so on a false claim.
And then they lived happily ever after.
Yes, that really happened. The title of the last chapter was even "Happily Ever After."
Personally, I would've liked to see a fight at the end.
But then, even after all this, you still say, "But at least Alice was there to make the story better, right?"
Well, no. She was barely there for anything. Which takes away a lot of the series' appeal.
And while we're on the topic of characters, may I also add that no one was acting in-character?
And while we're on the topic of out-of-character-ness, I would also like to say that Charlie found out about werewolves and that the Cullens weren't human (he doesn't know they're vampires, just that they aren't human), but guess what? He barely cares about it! Who would've thought?
Remember earlier, when I said this was like a bad fan fiction? Let's weigh all the characteristics.
Everything that happened in cliche fan fiction happened here, including:
- Pregnant Bella
- Stupid names
- OOC-ness (Out Of Character, if you can't figure it out)
- The commonness of gifted vampires
- Bella's self-control gift
- Two gifts for Bella
- Jacob imprinting
- Charlie knowing the secret
I'm sure there's more, but I don't want to think a lot.
Please don't read this.
August 30th, 2008 UPDATE:
Okay, so I've gotten over the initial shock of the book. I'm not going to write another review, because I'm still in denial that the book was actually okay. So I'm just going to say that I respect it. I'm never, ever going to like it, of course. But I respect it.
October 4th, 2008 UPDATE:
I changed my mind. I hate this book again with a passion. I no longer respect it or Meyer.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 6, 2025
“No measure of time with you will be long enough, but we'll start with forever.”
This book is Bella's awakening, and my favorite story ever written. Bella has been my self reflection for as long as I can remember. She starts out as the girl who doesn't belong anywhere and ends as the girl who found her true place in the world. I think I'll relate to that story for the rest of my life. Have I found my true place? Unlikely, but I have a while to figure it out. Life doesn't always start and end at the same time like it did for her.
The Twilight series is my home. My love. My favorite place to escape. I have never felt so much comfort as I do when I open them and read the familiar world of Bella and Edward. And Breaking Dawn is the most beautiful conclusion to a hugely under-appreciated series.
For three (four if you count Bree Tanner) books, we've slowly learned more and more about the Volturi. From their first mention in Twilight, mostly in passing during Carlisle's history, to them coming for the Cullens in Breaking Dawn, we learn so much. How they're the protectors, the "vampire police" and the group that makes it so vampirism isn't truly a part of the human world. A secret. One that must remain so, so vampires can thrive in the dark.
And in every book, their true purpose only becomes more visible. What I love most about the slow lead up to the Volturi no longer being cast as the "good guys" is how slow it truly happens. We see theories, ideas, and so much corruption within them during New Moon and Eclipse, and especially in The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner... but we don't see the inside. Adding Eleazar to the plot really helps everyone to come to the conclusion that they truly only seek power and care nothing for the well-being of the vampire race. Which is why they come for the Cullens at all.
There's a line near the end about everyone eventually standing up to them in the future, maybe overthrowing them for good, and I can't help but hope that's a string Stephenie will pull on in the future.
I love that everything mentioned in each of the previous books closes out in this one. Whether it be the lead up to Jacob imprinting, werewolves and vampires working together, the distinction of "spirit-warrior" vs "true werewolf", Bella becoming a vampire, Bella finding herself fitting in for the first time in her life, Bella's pregnancy as a whole and Rose's acceptance of Bella's decision in the end to become a part of the Cullen family. I'd even go so far to add Jasper coming into himself as he sees Bella handle the transition to immortality so well. Realizing that maybe, if he expected more of himself, he could learn control as well as she does.
Bella's transition and Eleazar's realization of the Volturi's transgressions are still two of the best scenes I've ever read in a book before. And I've read a lot of books.
More than anything, Edward and Bella have been my heart since I started reading things for myself. I don't think any other couple will match their significance in my mind, though many have tried over the last couple of years. To watch them grow together, and become equals among the supernatural is the greatest journey of my life. Every time. Without fault.
I hope Stephenie never gives up on them. I hope I'll be able to celebrate another book with her some day in the future. I will always trust her with my heart.
This book is Bella's awakening, and my favorite story ever written. Bella has been my self reflection for as long as I can remember. She starts out as the girl who doesn't belong anywhere and ends as the girl who found her true place in the world. I think I'll relate to that story for the rest of my life. Have I found my true place? Unlikely, but I have a while to figure it out. Life doesn't always start and end at the same time like it did for her.
The Twilight series is my home. My love. My favorite place to escape. I have never felt so much comfort as I do when I open them and read the familiar world of Bella and Edward. And Breaking Dawn is the most beautiful conclusion to a hugely under-appreciated series.
For three (four if you count Bree Tanner) books, we've slowly learned more and more about the Volturi. From their first mention in Twilight, mostly in passing during Carlisle's history, to them coming for the Cullens in Breaking Dawn, we learn so much. How they're the protectors, the "vampire police" and the group that makes it so vampirism isn't truly a part of the human world. A secret. One that must remain so, so vampires can thrive in the dark.
And in every book, their true purpose only becomes more visible. What I love most about the slow lead up to the Volturi no longer being cast as the "good guys" is how slow it truly happens. We see theories, ideas, and so much corruption within them during New Moon and Eclipse, and especially in The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner... but we don't see the inside. Adding Eleazar to the plot really helps everyone to come to the conclusion that they truly only seek power and care nothing for the well-being of the vampire race. Which is why they come for the Cullens at all.
There's a line near the end about everyone eventually standing up to them in the future, maybe overthrowing them for good, and I can't help but hope that's a string Stephenie will pull on in the future.
I love that everything mentioned in each of the previous books closes out in this one. Whether it be the lead up to Jacob imprinting, werewolves and vampires working together, the distinction of "spirit-warrior" vs "true werewolf", Bella becoming a vampire, Bella finding herself fitting in for the first time in her life, Bella's pregnancy as a whole and Rose's acceptance of Bella's decision in the end to become a part of the Cullen family. I'd even go so far to add Jasper coming into himself as he sees Bella handle the transition to immortality so well. Realizing that maybe, if he expected more of himself, he could learn control as well as she does.
Bella's transition and Eleazar's realization of the Volturi's transgressions are still two of the best scenes I've ever read in a book before. And I've read a lot of books.
More than anything, Edward and Bella have been my heart since I started reading things for myself. I don't think any other couple will match their significance in my mind, though many have tried over the last couple of years. To watch them grow together, and become equals among the supernatural is the greatest journey of my life. Every time. Without fault.
I hope Stephenie never gives up on them. I hope I'll be able to celebrate another book with her some day in the future. I will always trust her with my heart.
August 8, 2008
I'll preface by saying that I did enjoy this book - I love the story overall, and the characters, and the premise and all of that. I don't have a problem with Bella, and it was funny seeing her through Jacob's biased eyes - on the contrary, I like Bella. I wouldn't be able to read these books if I didn't. What really bothers me most about this series are the obsessive fans.
This is one of those series where the obsessive fans take the story away from the author, writing their own versions, coming up with their own theories and all the rest of it. I don't begrudge them that, but what really annoys me is when they say that Meyer has it all wrong, that that's not what vampires are like, and on and on. I came across a few discussions over what would happen in this book, which I tried to avoid, but people were coming up with all sorts of things: about babies, about what Bella's special gift would be, about the wedding and so on.
I would have thought that this book would have completely satisfied people, but from the glimpses I've caught (much to my annoyance), a lot of fans seem almost scornful of how things panned out. Maybe it's because there was too much of a build-up, like with the last Harry Potter book, and it creates an anti-climax. I'd like to pat myself on the back for avoiding that feeling, by steering clear of all the online discussions - though it's hard on Goodreads, because people's comments pop up on your updates page. Grrr.
The pregnancy took me by surprise, but I loved it. It was plausible, it was scary, and by switching Point-of-View to Jacob in the middle there (an ingenious device), we not only get a more fleshed-out perspective of that period, a wise move, but it makes Bella's life more fragile, precarious, uncertain. For a while there I was extremely worried that she wouldn't survive. Edward's pain was so very real, and really got to me.
The baby device is quite common in fantasy - the baby that will save the world or the baby that will unite people and so on. Here it was much more personal though, and I appreciated that. Renesmee was a little too perfect, but her bizarre nature balanced it enough that she wasn't too sickly sweet. I wasn't surprised at Jacob imprinting with her - and it was certainly an effective way of handling that pesky problem! I wonder, though, was Bella less interesting when she no longer had to worry herself over two men?
As for the other characters, apart from Bella and Jacob, they're very much in the background, which was rather disappointing. Playing their typical support roles, it felt a little rushed at times, almost like Meyer's heart wasn't really in it - as I understand it she wrote this book because her publisher wanted her to, like with the previous two; Twilight was meant to be a stand-alone novel in the beginning. [I've since learnt from a friend who saw her interviewed that she had this planned out from the beginning and had to convince her publishers to let her do it in four books. But it still felt a bit rushed and half-hearted in places.]
Is it just me or is Jacob Meyer's favourite? He gets an awful lot of airtime here, which gives us a chance to feel really comfortable with him, and he has a nice irreverent tone, but it still leaves many of the other characters thinly sketched. Even Edward, I never really feel like we break through his mystery and outward charisma to the person beneath. Bella sees him as a kind of idol, and as such, he's almost inhuman (ha ha). His emotions come across, but not so much his reasoning, or motivations. I'm not sure, maybe that's not it exactly, but I always want more Edward and want I'm given just doesn't satisfy me.
Now, it was always going to be tricky, writing Bella as a vampire. All her main quirks as a human are gone - the clumsiness, the blushing, the sweetness - which Meyer always used to define her character, so I was really pleased at how she managed to make Bella a convincing vampire while still retaining enough to make her familiar. Her voice doesn't really change, but her actions have. She's much less vulnerable, and that's bound to change anyone. But her body language has been altered, and her confidence too. It worked well. Edward, too, no longer treated her like a fragile human but effortlessly shifted his perspective and treated her as more of a partner, less as an eccentric pet.
The climax was less climactic than the other books, but the fact that it didn't end on violence like the previous book gave the end of the series the right kind of ending, a peaceful one. Bella's special ability made sense, and while it's not visibly impressive, it's certainly very useful and fits her character: always trying to protect others.
Is it just me or do all the books start with Bella in a car? I can't remember how the others started and I didn't get a chance to have a look, but it seemed like they do. If they do, it's an interesting comfort zone.
I love Meyer's version of the vampiric species - it's original and very well fleshed out, and differs at important points from the more generic, Anne Rice version, making them much more attractive, less vulnerable creatures.
This is an addictive series, with as many detractors as fans, and with as much hoo-ha as Harry Potter. They're not as well written as the Harry Potter books, but they're nothing to cringe over either - you don't read them for the prose, but for the story, which is emotionally intense and very, very addictive. It's a classic love story, it's just that the circumstances are a little different.
So, I guess the long and the short of it is, I loved the book, yet it wasn't wholly satisfying, like there was something missing, some part of character development maybe, or maybe I'm just wishing Edward was more fleshed out, now that Bella's like him and he's no longer an alien species. I can't quite put my finger on it. But there were lots of surprises, and the plot was well-structured in three parts, three distinct stages, with all the emotional gut-punching I've come to expect from Meyer. Truly, she puts me through the wringer like Diana Gabaldon - and for this alone I will always love these books (yes, I like the feeling of being put through the proverbial emotional wringer!). It's also a great romance, though too much time was spent telling us of the bond between Bella and Edward, and not enough time showing us. Perhaps that was what bugged me?
This is one of those series where the obsessive fans take the story away from the author, writing their own versions, coming up with their own theories and all the rest of it. I don't begrudge them that, but what really annoys me is when they say that Meyer has it all wrong, that that's not what vampires are like, and on and on. I came across a few discussions over what would happen in this book, which I tried to avoid, but people were coming up with all sorts of things: about babies, about what Bella's special gift would be, about the wedding and so on.
I would have thought that this book would have completely satisfied people, but from the glimpses I've caught (much to my annoyance), a lot of fans seem almost scornful of how things panned out. Maybe it's because there was too much of a build-up, like with the last Harry Potter book, and it creates an anti-climax. I'd like to pat myself on the back for avoiding that feeling, by steering clear of all the online discussions - though it's hard on Goodreads, because people's comments pop up on your updates page. Grrr.
The pregnancy took me by surprise, but I loved it. It was plausible, it was scary, and by switching Point-of-View to Jacob in the middle there (an ingenious device), we not only get a more fleshed-out perspective of that period, a wise move, but it makes Bella's life more fragile, precarious, uncertain. For a while there I was extremely worried that she wouldn't survive. Edward's pain was so very real, and really got to me.
The baby device is quite common in fantasy - the baby that will save the world or the baby that will unite people and so on. Here it was much more personal though, and I appreciated that. Renesmee was a little too perfect, but her bizarre nature balanced it enough that she wasn't too sickly sweet. I wasn't surprised at Jacob imprinting with her - and it was certainly an effective way of handling that pesky problem! I wonder, though, was Bella less interesting when she no longer had to worry herself over two men?
As for the other characters, apart from Bella and Jacob, they're very much in the background, which was rather disappointing. Playing their typical support roles, it felt a little rushed at times, almost like Meyer's heart wasn't really in it - as I understand it she wrote this book because her publisher wanted her to, like with the previous two; Twilight was meant to be a stand-alone novel in the beginning. [I've since learnt from a friend who saw her interviewed that she had this planned out from the beginning and had to convince her publishers to let her do it in four books. But it still felt a bit rushed and half-hearted in places.]
Is it just me or is Jacob Meyer's favourite? He gets an awful lot of airtime here, which gives us a chance to feel really comfortable with him, and he has a nice irreverent tone, but it still leaves many of the other characters thinly sketched. Even Edward, I never really feel like we break through his mystery and outward charisma to the person beneath. Bella sees him as a kind of idol, and as such, he's almost inhuman (ha ha). His emotions come across, but not so much his reasoning, or motivations. I'm not sure, maybe that's not it exactly, but I always want more Edward and want I'm given just doesn't satisfy me.
Now, it was always going to be tricky, writing Bella as a vampire. All her main quirks as a human are gone - the clumsiness, the blushing, the sweetness - which Meyer always used to define her character, so I was really pleased at how she managed to make Bella a convincing vampire while still retaining enough to make her familiar. Her voice doesn't really change, but her actions have. She's much less vulnerable, and that's bound to change anyone. But her body language has been altered, and her confidence too. It worked well. Edward, too, no longer treated her like a fragile human but effortlessly shifted his perspective and treated her as more of a partner, less as an eccentric pet.
The climax was less climactic than the other books, but the fact that it didn't end on violence like the previous book gave the end of the series the right kind of ending, a peaceful one. Bella's special ability made sense, and while it's not visibly impressive, it's certainly very useful and fits her character: always trying to protect others.
Is it just me or do all the books start with Bella in a car? I can't remember how the others started and I didn't get a chance to have a look, but it seemed like they do. If they do, it's an interesting comfort zone.
I love Meyer's version of the vampiric species - it's original and very well fleshed out, and differs at important points from the more generic, Anne Rice version, making them much more attractive, less vulnerable creatures.
This is an addictive series, with as many detractors as fans, and with as much hoo-ha as Harry Potter. They're not as well written as the Harry Potter books, but they're nothing to cringe over either - you don't read them for the prose, but for the story, which is emotionally intense and very, very addictive. It's a classic love story, it's just that the circumstances are a little different.
So, I guess the long and the short of it is, I loved the book, yet it wasn't wholly satisfying, like there was something missing, some part of character development maybe, or maybe I'm just wishing Edward was more fleshed out, now that Bella's like him and he's no longer an alien species. I can't quite put my finger on it. But there were lots of surprises, and the plot was well-structured in three parts, three distinct stages, with all the emotional gut-punching I've come to expect from Meyer. Truly, she puts me through the wringer like Diana Gabaldon - and for this alone I will always love these books (yes, I like the feeling of being put through the proverbial emotional wringer!). It's also a great romance, though too much time was spent telling us of the bond between Bella and Edward, and not enough time showing us. Perhaps that was what bugged me?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 22, 2024
Welcome to my re-read of the Vampire Saga Twilight! 🍎It’s been nearly two decades since this series sparkled its way into Twi-hard-fans hearts. 🥰 To make this re-read more interesting- I’ll be listening to: Unbitten: A Journey through the Twilight Saga on Spotify. 🎧 SPOILER ALERT: I will be updating this review as I tackle the books, podcast and movies- highlighting my favorite takeaways along the way. So, if you’re unfamiliar with this saga- and plan on reading it- don’t read further than here 👈
📚Chapter 1: Bella is starting to experience all the luxuries being a Cullen entails
🎧Podcast Episode 71: Jacob is missing and wedding planning
📚Chapter 2: Esme and Renee getting along so well!
📚Chapter 3: Renee and Charlie give Bella a beautiful wedding gift
🎧Podcast Episode 72: Vampire babies- why they’re not a great idea.
📚Chapter 4: They’re married!! The wedding festivities.
🎧Podcast Episode 73: Jacob appears at the wedding and of course it’s super great 🙄
📚Chapter 5: Bella has her human experience
🎧Podcast Episode 74: Edward getting the birds and bee’s advice before the honeymoon
📚Chapter 6: Edward trying to distract Bella from the deed
📚Chapter 7: Bella’s weird new habits, there’s something in there
🎧Podcast Episode 75: Edward breaks lots of things, giving readers no real details- but baby? Crap!
📚Chapter 8: Switch to Jacob’s POV and he wants to fight the Cullen’s
📚Chapter 9: Edward asks Jacob for help
🎧Podcast Episode 76: Bella’s body being drained by the baby
📚Chapter 10: Bella admits to Jacob that she knows she’s going to die
📚Chapter 11: Jacob and Seth leave the pack to protect Bella
🎧Podcast Episode 77: Seth’s maturity and Jacob breaking ties with the pack
📚Chapter 12: Bella needs blood for the baby
📚Chapter 13: The old pack come and begs Jacob back
🎧Podcast Episode 78: Leah the unwanted- hearing everyone’s unwelcome thoughts
📚Chapter 14: The baby breaks a rib
📚Chapter 15: How to get the baby out discussion
🎧Podcast Episode 79: Jacob can feel himself getting more comfortable with the Vampires
📚Chapter 16: Edward hears the baby
📚Chapter 17: Jacob gives Edward permission to save Bella without breaking the treaty
🎧Podcast Episode 80: Bella’s endless selfishness when it comes to Jacob
📚Chapter 18: Goodbye Bella, Hello Renesmee
🎧Podcast Episode 81: A vial of Edward venom in a corpse
📚Chapter 19: Bella experiences the turn
📚Chapter 20: Bella’s view of everything detailed
🎧Podcast Episode 82: Bella’s restraint in holding back showing pain to protect Edward
📚Chapter 21: Bella is able to run away from a human while hunting
📚Chapter 22: Bella meets Renesmee and finds out Jacob has imprinted
🎧Podcast Episode 83: Renesmee has a pull towards her mother
📚Chapter 23: How Renesmee communicates
📚Chapter 24: Edward and Bella finally get alone time
🎧Podcast Episode 84: How everyone tries to keep Bella away from her baby
📚Chapter 25: Jacob tells Charlie that Bella is back
📚Chapter 26: Bella handles Charlie well and he’s a grandpa
🎧Podcast Episode 85: Renesmee’s accelerated growth
📚Chapter 27: Bella and Edward are worry about Renesmee’s lifespan
📚Chapter 28: Irina sees Renesmee and runs to tell the Volturi
🎧Podcast Episode 86: Renesmee milestones and aging and smarts
📚Chapter 29: Alice and Jasper leave
📚Chapter 30: Witnesses start to gather
🎧Podcast Episode 87: Witnesses turn into a defense system
📚Chapter 31: Bella is a shield
📚Chapter 32: Defenses and witnesses start to train
🎧Podcast Episode 88: All the different vampire powers
📚Chapter 33: Bella arranges for documents for Jacob and Renesmee
📚Chapter 34: Some of the visitors are having doubts about the standoff with the Volturi
🎧Podcast Episode 89: Bella is super smart as a vampire
📚Chapter 35: Bella packs up Renesmee and prepares her to run
📚Chapter 36: Aro pauses to meet Renesmee
🎧Podcast Episode 90: Aro actually thinking werewolves would make great guard dogs
📚Chapter 37: Witnesses agree, Renesmee is no threat, yet the Volturi don’t agree
📚Chapter 38: Alice comes back and saves the day!
📚Chapter 39: And now they know Renesmee will live forever as well
🎧Podcast Episode 91: The debate lead up to no battle-a bit disappointing
🎬Breaking Dawn 1: Better than the book!!
🎬Breaking Dawn 2: The epic battle scene!! ❤️
🎧Podcast… not out yet…. who cares? Not me. 😉
These books are not the absolute best thing ever written. However, they are nostalgic and are enjoyable for what they are. There’s no doubt that the movies are better than the books. And now that I’m done, I kinda wish I’d chosen a different podcast to listen to. Still- glad to revisit the series. It was enjoyable.
📚Chapter 1: Bella is starting to experience all the luxuries being a Cullen entails
🎧Podcast Episode 71: Jacob is missing and wedding planning
📚Chapter 2: Esme and Renee getting along so well!
📚Chapter 3: Renee and Charlie give Bella a beautiful wedding gift
🎧Podcast Episode 72: Vampire babies- why they’re not a great idea.
📚Chapter 4: They’re married!! The wedding festivities.
🎧Podcast Episode 73: Jacob appears at the wedding and of course it’s super great 🙄
📚Chapter 5: Bella has her human experience
🎧Podcast Episode 74: Edward getting the birds and bee’s advice before the honeymoon
📚Chapter 6: Edward trying to distract Bella from the deed
📚Chapter 7: Bella’s weird new habits, there’s something in there
🎧Podcast Episode 75: Edward breaks lots of things, giving readers no real details- but baby? Crap!
📚Chapter 8: Switch to Jacob’s POV and he wants to fight the Cullen’s
📚Chapter 9: Edward asks Jacob for help
🎧Podcast Episode 76: Bella’s body being drained by the baby
📚Chapter 10: Bella admits to Jacob that she knows she’s going to die
📚Chapter 11: Jacob and Seth leave the pack to protect Bella
🎧Podcast Episode 77: Seth’s maturity and Jacob breaking ties with the pack
📚Chapter 12: Bella needs blood for the baby
📚Chapter 13: The old pack come and begs Jacob back
🎧Podcast Episode 78: Leah the unwanted- hearing everyone’s unwelcome thoughts
📚Chapter 14: The baby breaks a rib
📚Chapter 15: How to get the baby out discussion
🎧Podcast Episode 79: Jacob can feel himself getting more comfortable with the Vampires
📚Chapter 16: Edward hears the baby
📚Chapter 17: Jacob gives Edward permission to save Bella without breaking the treaty
🎧Podcast Episode 80: Bella’s endless selfishness when it comes to Jacob
📚Chapter 18: Goodbye Bella, Hello Renesmee
🎧Podcast Episode 81: A vial of Edward venom in a corpse
📚Chapter 19: Bella experiences the turn
📚Chapter 20: Bella’s view of everything detailed
🎧Podcast Episode 82: Bella’s restraint in holding back showing pain to protect Edward
📚Chapter 21: Bella is able to run away from a human while hunting
📚Chapter 22: Bella meets Renesmee and finds out Jacob has imprinted
🎧Podcast Episode 83: Renesmee has a pull towards her mother
📚Chapter 23: How Renesmee communicates
📚Chapter 24: Edward and Bella finally get alone time
🎧Podcast Episode 84: How everyone tries to keep Bella away from her baby
📚Chapter 25: Jacob tells Charlie that Bella is back
📚Chapter 26: Bella handles Charlie well and he’s a grandpa
🎧Podcast Episode 85: Renesmee’s accelerated growth
📚Chapter 27: Bella and Edward are worry about Renesmee’s lifespan
📚Chapter 28: Irina sees Renesmee and runs to tell the Volturi
🎧Podcast Episode 86: Renesmee milestones and aging and smarts
📚Chapter 29: Alice and Jasper leave
📚Chapter 30: Witnesses start to gather
🎧Podcast Episode 87: Witnesses turn into a defense system
📚Chapter 31: Bella is a shield
📚Chapter 32: Defenses and witnesses start to train
🎧Podcast Episode 88: All the different vampire powers
📚Chapter 33: Bella arranges for documents for Jacob and Renesmee
📚Chapter 34: Some of the visitors are having doubts about the standoff with the Volturi
🎧Podcast Episode 89: Bella is super smart as a vampire
📚Chapter 35: Bella packs up Renesmee and prepares her to run
📚Chapter 36: Aro pauses to meet Renesmee
🎧Podcast Episode 90: Aro actually thinking werewolves would make great guard dogs
📚Chapter 37: Witnesses agree, Renesmee is no threat, yet the Volturi don’t agree
📚Chapter 38: Alice comes back and saves the day!
📚Chapter 39: And now they know Renesmee will live forever as well
🎧Podcast Episode 91: The debate lead up to no battle-a bit disappointing
🎬Breaking Dawn 1: Better than the book!!
🎬Breaking Dawn 2: The epic battle scene!! ❤️
🎧Podcast… not out yet…. who cares? Not me. 😉
These books are not the absolute best thing ever written. However, they are nostalgic and are enjoyable for what they are. There’s no doubt that the movies are better than the books. And now that I’m done, I kinda wish I’d chosen a different podcast to listen to. Still- glad to revisit the series. It was enjoyable.
March 13, 2018
The fact that this has an above 3 rating on this website is a travesty.
It's taken Snark Squad over a year to read and recap this book, in large part because it was actively awful. Listen, this isn't hating on a popular series because it's cheesy or a love story or any of that other nonsense. This is an actual garbage story.
First, it's PROBLEMATIC, which is consistent from the previous entries. Bella and Edward "can't" have sex while she's a human, because if they have sex, Bella will probably actually die. For the entire series, Bella's sexuality is held hostage to Edward's rules and whims. Then, they finally get married, and instead of backing up her IF YOU HAVE SEX BEFORE MARRIAGE YOU WILL DIE BUT SEX AFTER MARRIAGE IS COOL message, Stephenie Meyer just makes sex horrible period? Bella isn’t allowed to enjoy sex. She can’t bring herself to talk about sex with her partner in a mature or adult way. Edward lords sex over her as a means of control. When she finally "gets to" have sex, it's physically dangerous for her. After she has sex, she has to repeatedly apologize for it. Bella enjoys sex, but she's "too fragile" to have it. Bella has to beg, plead and scheme her way into more sex. Bella gets insta-pregnant and it kills her. WHAT IS THIS? WHAT IS THIS MESSAGING?
Breaking Dawn is also racist in a lot of little, strange, micro-aggressive ways. And then it's racist in very overt ways. Stephenie Meyer made the Native Americans in her story werewolves, and then spends the entire series calling them feral, wild, dogs, smelly and assuring us they are the lesser supernatural race. Then, in this book, we get vampires from all over the world, and all of the people of color are wild or described in the most painful and stereotypical ways.
And then, in the worst turn of events ever, Jacob imprints on A BABY. And if anyone tells you "it isn't like that," question their reading comprehension, because it is LIKE THAT AS HELL. At BEST, it is child grooming. At worst, we have to read about a pedophile over and over again. "But they are supernatural beings who don't follow our rules." Like, okay people. If that's what you need to tell yourself to feel good about reading a man fall in love with a days old baby. I, for one, hated it. It's gross, especially because it's meant to be this epic love. Imprinting as a concept is messed up because it robs agency from especially the women in the equation. It's extra gross when that woman is actually A BABY. You guys, it's implied that the entire reason Jacob even liked Bella was because of a pull toward HER UNFERTILIZED EGG? LIKE W H A T T H E H E L L.
But okay. Let's say you don't care about all the awful messaging in this book, from misogyny to pedophiles, and racism in between. This also is not a good story? It's nearly 800 pages of NEXT TO NOTHING HAPPENING. 800 pages and we rush past the marriage (the ceremony is skipped over), get a chapter of honeymoon, then she's pregnant and we get the pregnancy and delivery FROM TWO DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES WHY, and then the Volturi take MONTHS to get to Fork and I swear to god, at one point the vampires spend an entire night staring at each other. I'M NOT JOKING.
In the last 30ish pages, we get the big "showdown," but after gathering all of these incredibly powerful vampires, the big showdown is a bunch of people talking in a field for 4 chapters. And then that's it. And then it's over.
AFTER 800 PAGES.
It was boring, plot-less, repetitive, Bella consistently cheats her way through narration, knowing things she couldn't possibly know. Meyer plays fast and loose with her own vampire rules. Bella is immediately the best at everything, so there is absolutely no tension there. We spend 3 books building up to OH NOES BABY VAMPS ARE DANGEROUS! And then in like one hot second it's like "lol, it's okay, Bella is too special to be dangerous." Wow. Payoff.
Nothing makes sense, everything is the worst, why do people like this, please send help.
Full recaps here: http://www.snarksquad.com/category/bo...
It's taken Snark Squad over a year to read and recap this book, in large part because it was actively awful. Listen, this isn't hating on a popular series because it's cheesy or a love story or any of that other nonsense. This is an actual garbage story.
First, it's PROBLEMATIC, which is consistent from the previous entries. Bella and Edward "can't" have sex while she's a human, because if they have sex, Bella will probably actually die. For the entire series, Bella's sexuality is held hostage to Edward's rules and whims. Then, they finally get married, and instead of backing up her IF YOU HAVE SEX BEFORE MARRIAGE YOU WILL DIE BUT SEX AFTER MARRIAGE IS COOL message, Stephenie Meyer just makes sex horrible period? Bella isn’t allowed to enjoy sex. She can’t bring herself to talk about sex with her partner in a mature or adult way. Edward lords sex over her as a means of control. When she finally "gets to" have sex, it's physically dangerous for her. After she has sex, she has to repeatedly apologize for it. Bella enjoys sex, but she's "too fragile" to have it. Bella has to beg, plead and scheme her way into more sex. Bella gets insta-pregnant and it kills her. WHAT IS THIS? WHAT IS THIS MESSAGING?
Breaking Dawn is also racist in a lot of little, strange, micro-aggressive ways. And then it's racist in very overt ways. Stephenie Meyer made the Native Americans in her story werewolves, and then spends the entire series calling them feral, wild, dogs, smelly and assuring us they are the lesser supernatural race. Then, in this book, we get vampires from all over the world, and all of the people of color are wild or described in the most painful and stereotypical ways.
And then, in the worst turn of events ever, Jacob imprints on A BABY. And if anyone tells you "it isn't like that," question their reading comprehension, because it is LIKE THAT AS HELL. At BEST, it is child grooming. At worst, we have to read about a pedophile over and over again. "But they are supernatural beings who don't follow our rules." Like, okay people. If that's what you need to tell yourself to feel good about reading a man fall in love with a days old baby. I, for one, hated it. It's gross, especially because it's meant to be this epic love. Imprinting as a concept is messed up because it robs agency from especially the women in the equation. It's extra gross when that woman is actually A BABY. You guys, it's implied that the entire reason Jacob even liked Bella was because of a pull toward HER UNFERTILIZED EGG? LIKE W H A T T H E H E L L.
But okay. Let's say you don't care about all the awful messaging in this book, from misogyny to pedophiles, and racism in between. This also is not a good story? It's nearly 800 pages of NEXT TO NOTHING HAPPENING. 800 pages and we rush past the marriage (the ceremony is skipped over), get a chapter of honeymoon, then she's pregnant and we get the pregnancy and delivery FROM TWO DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES WHY, and then the Volturi take MONTHS to get to Fork and I swear to god, at one point the vampires spend an entire night staring at each other. I'M NOT JOKING.
In the last 30ish pages, we get the big "showdown," but after gathering all of these incredibly powerful vampires, the big showdown is a bunch of people talking in a field for 4 chapters. And then that's it. And then it's over.
AFTER 800 PAGES.
It was boring, plot-less, repetitive, Bella consistently cheats her way through narration, knowing things she couldn't possibly know. Meyer plays fast and loose with her own vampire rules. Bella is immediately the best at everything, so there is absolutely no tension there. We spend 3 books building up to OH NOES BABY VAMPS ARE DANGEROUS! And then in like one hot second it's like "lol, it's okay, Bella is too special to be dangerous." Wow. Payoff.
Nothing makes sense, everything is the worst, why do people like this, please send help.
Full recaps here: http://www.snarksquad.com/category/bo...
October 28, 2021
The song is Closer by The Chainsmokers and Halsey.
My views on this book:
My views on this book:
August 23, 2008
I gave Breaking Dawn several days' worth of chances and it did nothing but stun, anger, and disappoint me. I enjoyed the first three books, despite how badly written and full of grammar mistakes and typos they were, because they were fun and exciting and took me away from a sucky year at college. Breaking Dawn, however, was so shockingly awful that I actually burst into hysterical laughter every time something drastic happened. I actually was unable to read it in one sitting like I wanted to because my brain couldn't handle the ridiculousness for more than an hour at a time.
Not even considering how insanely bad the plot and writing were, the morals the book presents made me wonder how Stephenie even managed to get it published.
Moral #1: Marriage is easy. Bella doesn't have to pay for, take care of, or do anything in the way of keeping her marriage going. Not even touching on the whole Mr. Perfect issue.
Moral #2: The only thing worth staying alive for is sex. Bella never stopped considering her choice to become a vampire until she had sex with Edward and then suddenly wanted to hold back. Crying and begging him to screw her because her happy dream was over? Come on girl, have some pride. Pull yourself together, Bella. Sex isn't everything.
Moral #3: Women are only good for babymaking. "Had her body changed because she was a werewolf? Or had she become a werewolf because her body was wrong? The only female werewolf in the history of forever. Was that because she wasn't as female as she should be?" Are infertile females less female because they can't make babies and that's all women are good for? Stephenie thinks so.
Moral #4: All of your problems will be solved for you, so don't try to fix them. That year of wanting to drink human blood? Don't worry about it, you'll just skip it anyway. That baby who's killing you from the inside? Don't sweat it, Edward will just make you a vampire and then you'll be fine. Annoying cub boy won't fall out of love with you? Chill out, he'll imprint on your babies and then you won't ever have to worry about them getting in the way of your perfect love life again. And that leads into #5...
Moral #5: Pedophilia is okay! Just wait until they get old enough (or in Renesmee's case, wait until they're 6 years old because then they'll look old enough) and you're good to go.
I could keep going with the morals but I feel the need to touch on the fact that the ending was the biggest and most awful cop-out I could've imagined her writing. The other books had incredibly kickass, awesome action scenes that pulled me in and wouldn't let me stop reading. Breaking Dawn just built up and built up and then the Volturi just decided, whatever, no battle. Go home with your mutant baby. See you in six years when she tries to make babies with the werewolf and we get pissed off at you again. There were no struggles. There were a lot of solutions springing from midair and the preparation for sacrifices that were never made.
And that is why Breaking Dawn ruined the Twilight series for me.
Not even considering how insanely bad the plot and writing were, the morals the book presents made me wonder how Stephenie even managed to get it published.
Moral #1: Marriage is easy. Bella doesn't have to pay for, take care of, or do anything in the way of keeping her marriage going. Not even touching on the whole Mr. Perfect issue.
Moral #2: The only thing worth staying alive for is sex. Bella never stopped considering her choice to become a vampire until she had sex with Edward and then suddenly wanted to hold back. Crying and begging him to screw her because her happy dream was over? Come on girl, have some pride. Pull yourself together, Bella. Sex isn't everything.
Moral #3: Women are only good for babymaking. "Had her body changed because she was a werewolf? Or had she become a werewolf because her body was wrong? The only female werewolf in the history of forever. Was that because she wasn't as female as she should be?" Are infertile females less female because they can't make babies and that's all women are good for? Stephenie thinks so.
Moral #4: All of your problems will be solved for you, so don't try to fix them. That year of wanting to drink human blood? Don't worry about it, you'll just skip it anyway. That baby who's killing you from the inside? Don't sweat it, Edward will just make you a vampire and then you'll be fine. Annoying cub boy won't fall out of love with you? Chill out, he'll imprint on your babies and then you won't ever have to worry about them getting in the way of your perfect love life again. And that leads into #5...
Moral #5: Pedophilia is okay! Just wait until they get old enough (or in Renesmee's case, wait until they're 6 years old because then they'll look old enough) and you're good to go.
I could keep going with the morals but I feel the need to touch on the fact that the ending was the biggest and most awful cop-out I could've imagined her writing. The other books had incredibly kickass, awesome action scenes that pulled me in and wouldn't let me stop reading. Breaking Dawn just built up and built up and then the Volturi just decided, whatever, no battle. Go home with your mutant baby. See you in six years when she tries to make babies with the werewolf and we get pissed off at you again. There were no struggles. There were a lot of solutions springing from midair and the preparation for sacrifices that were never made.
And that is why Breaking Dawn ruined the Twilight series for me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 7, 2017
Honestly, if I could give this garbage a rating of negative seven trillion stars, I would. Because that's how awful it is.
I'm sorry if you love this book and this series, but friend? You need to read this book CRITICALLY, because it is a fucking trainwreck. Let's break this down because I have a lot of thoughts.
THIS BOOK NEEDS EDITING LIKE WHOA
- Seriously, the writing is so bad. So clunky. So drawn out.
- This thing is 756 pages long. It could have been half that length and still covered everything it needed to.
- When, after 600-odd pages, we finally get to "OMG THE VOLTURI ARE COMING"?? Instead of jumping straight into the action, we're treated to like 75 pages of "Oh hey, like twenty million more vampires turn up, lemme describe them for you in great detail!" and "Then I went to find this guy who may or may not be shady and I'm not entirely sure why Alice is sending me there oh well, let's just dedicate an entire chapter to it anyway tralalalala"
- The whole book ends with THE VOLTURI JUST LEAVING?!?!?!?!?! Like...ARE YOU SHITTING ME, MEYER?? Like two thousand fucking pages of this terrible writing and THAT'S how you write the final climax?! I AM SO FUCKING MAD, YOU GUYS.
IT'S SUPER RACIST
- You can argue all you want that having a Native American character makes everything okay. It really doesn't.
- The perfect white vampires call the Indigenous characters dogs. They tell them they stink. They look down on them. They give them their castoff clothing. They give them food in big metal bowls with "Fido" on the side of it. It may not be INTENTIONALLY racist, but it reinforces hundreds of years of "white people are better because of the colour of their skin" bullshit.
- It's full of cultural appropriation.
- When other Indigenous characters turn up - this time from South America - they're referred to as savage, as feral, as wild. And Bella's afraid of them before they've even said a word.
- Carlisle TOOK JACOB'S BLOOD WITHOUT PERMISSION AND DID ALL KINDS OF TESTS ON IT?!?!?!? THE FUCK. NO. That is waaaaaaaaaaay too close for comfort to all kinds of atrocious medical experiments that were done on minority groups without their knowledge. Waaaaaaaaaay too close to eugenics. N.O.P.E.
- And then you add in the fact that Leah basically ends up infertile as a result of becoming part of the pack, and oof.
IMPRINTING IS FUCKED UP
- The whole "women basically have no say in the matter but it doesn't matter because these guys are TOTALLY perfect for them" thing is gross.
- Then you add in Quil imprinting on A TODDLER, which is a) hella gross and b) literally grooming.
- And THEN you get to Jacob imprinting ON A FUCKING NEWBORN BABY
- Except that it goes further than that and basically implies that the only reason Jacob was ever interested in Bella was because the egg that would become Renesmee was hanging out in Bella's ovary???
- Renesmee is repeatedly sexualised, despite being an infant. She's super touchy-feely with Jacob and the way that it's written made me repeatedly uncomfortable because SHE'S THREE MONTHS OLD JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.
- A literal infant (chronologically, if not developmentally. But even developmentally, she's not much more than a toddler) is wearing the equivalent of a promise ring. No thank you please.
BELLA'S STORY IS A TERRIBLE EXAMPLE FOR TEENAGE GIRLS
- She doesn't want to get married. But she goes through with it because Edward refuses to sleep with her unless they're married. So she talks herself into it.
- Her reaction to the wedding is basically red flag after red flag after red flag. GIRL. RUN.
- The honeymoon is also red flag after red flag after red flag. She's clearly not ready to have sex, and yet she's built it up so much in her head that she feels like she has to.
- Her desire to have sex is constantly is constantly belittled and repeatedly shut down by Edward. GIRLS DON'T WANT SEX, BELLA. GOD.
- She has no interest in having children, has never spent any time around children, and is kind of thrilled that marrying Edward means she doesn't have to worry about children. And yet ends up insta-pregnant.
- The second she gets pregnant, she's all "OMG I WAS WRONG ALL THIS TIME, I REEEEEEEALLY WANT TO HAVE KIDS!!!!!!!"
- The baby literally sucks the life out of her? Like, to some extent, that's what babies do anyway. But this is EXTREME life sucking.
- Edward basically plans to drug her and abort the baby??
- When that fails because Rosalie gets involved, his next best plan is to get Rosalie out of the way, drug Bella, abort the baby, and then have Jacob sleep with her a bunch of times so that she can have the children she apparently now wants???
- She has literally no self-worth, to the point where when anybody looks at her once she's a supermodel-worthy vampire, she's still all "WHY WOULD THEY BE LOOKING AT ME, I'M HIDEOUS??"
- In short, literally EVERYTHING that happens to Bella in the course of this book, up to and including her caesarean-by-teeth, is fucked up and not even remotely okay.
IN SUMMARY
- This book is the worst.
- The first time I read it, I literally screamed and hurled it at the wall.
- I have thousands of words of receipts on snarksquad.com
- Come at me.
I'm sorry if you love this book and this series, but friend? You need to read this book CRITICALLY, because it is a fucking trainwreck. Let's break this down because I have a lot of thoughts.
THIS BOOK NEEDS EDITING LIKE WHOA
- Seriously, the writing is so bad. So clunky. So drawn out.
- This thing is 756 pages long. It could have been half that length and still covered everything it needed to.
- When, after 600-odd pages, we finally get to "OMG THE VOLTURI ARE COMING"?? Instead of jumping straight into the action, we're treated to like 75 pages of "Oh hey, like twenty million more vampires turn up, lemme describe them for you in great detail!" and "Then I went to find this guy who may or may not be shady and I'm not entirely sure why Alice is sending me there oh well, let's just dedicate an entire chapter to it anyway tralalalala"
- The whole book ends with THE VOLTURI JUST LEAVING?!?!?!?!?! Like...ARE YOU SHITTING ME, MEYER?? Like two thousand fucking pages of this terrible writing and THAT'S how you write the final climax?! I AM SO FUCKING MAD, YOU GUYS.
IT'S SUPER RACIST
- You can argue all you want that having a Native American character makes everything okay. It really doesn't.
- The perfect white vampires call the Indigenous characters dogs. They tell them they stink. They look down on them. They give them their castoff clothing. They give them food in big metal bowls with "Fido" on the side of it. It may not be INTENTIONALLY racist, but it reinforces hundreds of years of "white people are better because of the colour of their skin" bullshit.
- It's full of cultural appropriation.
- When other Indigenous characters turn up - this time from South America - they're referred to as savage, as feral, as wild. And Bella's afraid of them before they've even said a word.
- Carlisle TOOK JACOB'S BLOOD WITHOUT PERMISSION AND DID ALL KINDS OF TESTS ON IT?!?!?!? THE FUCK. NO. That is waaaaaaaaaaay too close for comfort to all kinds of atrocious medical experiments that were done on minority groups without their knowledge. Waaaaaaaaaay too close to eugenics. N.O.P.E.
- And then you add in the fact that Leah basically ends up infertile as a result of becoming part of the pack, and oof.
IMPRINTING IS FUCKED UP
- The whole "women basically have no say in the matter but it doesn't matter because these guys are TOTALLY perfect for them" thing is gross.
- Then you add in Quil imprinting on A TODDLER, which is a) hella gross and b) literally grooming.
- And THEN you get to Jacob imprinting ON A FUCKING NEWBORN BABY
- Except that it goes further than that and basically implies that the only reason Jacob was ever interested in Bella was because the egg that would become Renesmee was hanging out in Bella's ovary???
- Renesmee is repeatedly sexualised, despite being an infant. She's super touchy-feely with Jacob and the way that it's written made me repeatedly uncomfortable because SHE'S THREE MONTHS OLD JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.
- A literal infant (chronologically, if not developmentally. But even developmentally, she's not much more than a toddler) is wearing the equivalent of a promise ring. No thank you please.
BELLA'S STORY IS A TERRIBLE EXAMPLE FOR TEENAGE GIRLS
- She doesn't want to get married. But she goes through with it because Edward refuses to sleep with her unless they're married. So she talks herself into it.
- Her reaction to the wedding is basically red flag after red flag after red flag. GIRL. RUN.
- The honeymoon is also red flag after red flag after red flag. She's clearly not ready to have sex, and yet she's built it up so much in her head that she feels like she has to.
- Her desire to have sex is constantly is constantly belittled and repeatedly shut down by Edward. GIRLS DON'T WANT SEX, BELLA. GOD.
- She has no interest in having children, has never spent any time around children, and is kind of thrilled that marrying Edward means she doesn't have to worry about children. And yet ends up insta-pregnant.
- The second she gets pregnant, she's all "OMG I WAS WRONG ALL THIS TIME, I REEEEEEEALLY WANT TO HAVE KIDS!!!!!!!"
- The baby literally sucks the life out of her? Like, to some extent, that's what babies do anyway. But this is EXTREME life sucking.
- Edward basically plans to drug her and abort the baby??
- When that fails because Rosalie gets involved, his next best plan is to get Rosalie out of the way, drug Bella, abort the baby, and then have Jacob sleep with her a bunch of times so that she can have the children she apparently now wants???
- She has literally no self-worth, to the point where when anybody looks at her once she's a supermodel-worthy vampire, she's still all "WHY WOULD THEY BE LOOKING AT ME, I'M HIDEOUS??"
- In short, literally EVERYTHING that happens to Bella in the course of this book, up to and including her caesarean-by-teeth, is fucked up and not even remotely okay.
IN SUMMARY
- This book is the worst.
- The first time I read it, I literally screamed and hurled it at the wall.
- I have thousands of words of receipts on snarksquad.com
- Come at me.
July 30, 2020
What. A. Waste. Of. Time
So guess what? I won't waste your or my time with a review. I hated it. End of story.
So guess what? I won't waste your or my time with a review. I hated it. End of story.
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