New Moon by Stephenie Meyer

New Moon by Stephenie Meyer

Date Started: December 22, 2008 Date Finished: December 25, 2008

Summary: The story basically picks up where the last one left off. Bella is in a depression that stems from Edward leaving at beginning of the book. She decides she wants to be reckless and she starts hanging out with Jacob Black, an old childhood friend. After being almost attacked by the old vampire Laurent, Bella realizes that Victoria is after her as well. Bella learns that Jacob is a werewolf and that he is going to protect her from Victoria.

Likes: I like this book so much more than the first one. It's all because of Jacob. Jacob is so genuine and down to earth. He's friendly and playful, unlike Edward who is just so cold and emotionless. Even though I really dislike Bella, she was a bit more bearable in this book because she was having fun with Jacob. She had a little bit of personality, even though she was leading Jacob on the whole time. Bella is more bitchy in this one, but also a little bit snarky. Sometimes it was cute, the other times it was annoying. The mix up about Bella's funeral and Harry's funeral was funny, but kind of sad, only in the sense that Meyer had Harry die for that mix up to happen.

Dislikes: Given that I already know what the other books are about, I'm a bit sad that Bella and Edward are together and Jacob has to settle for their demon spawn. Basically the good ended when Edward came back. This story suffers from the Good Secondary Characters, annoying Main Characters situation. All the side characters are pretty much fleshed out as much as Meyer can with her writing skills (they've gotten a bit better, but that's because Edward was gone for most of the book), but she still fails to flesh out the main characters. It's irritating because as a reader, you are really rooting for the underdog (underwolf?) when you should be rooting for the main characters. Except I hate the main characters. I think that Bella was more bearable with Jacob, I could read the story without getting as bored as I did with the first one. Bella's cliff diving kind of reminded me of the episode of Grey's Anatomy when Meredith died. I don't think either one of them was conciously trying to commit suicide, but they eventually just stopped fighting the current. That part annoyed me of this book. She states that she was bored and decided to jump off a cliff by herself. Smart. At any rate, the book starts to get irritation after Edward was mentioned and he's going to Italy to commit suicide. At this point, I started skimming again. Frankly, the story was half way descent up until Edward comes back and then it's like Jacob drops out of the picture.

Overall: I liked this one a hell of a lot better than the first. I actually read most of it, instead of skipping chapters like I did with Twilight. The writing isn't much better, but the adverbs are killed when Bella's with Jacob. Everything felt so natural up until Edward comes into the picture. Knowing how the saga ends over all, I'm a bit afraid to read the third one. Since I already read the fourth (skimmed mostly just to see if the rumors about the demon spawn child were true), I really don't want to read how their love develops, because I really don't care how things work out so perfectly for them. I still think I'd probably be better off reading Twilight fan fiction where Jacob finds his perfect person and Bella gets no one. Or better yet, I'll just write my own original story... all the time I waste reading these books...anyway on to the next one. I'm going to pretend that this is a trilogy since the fourth one is so horrible. It's like Meyer relapsed or something.