Review Detail

I’m a little surprised, because the second time around I ended up liking New Moon better than I thought I would. Aside from Edward being away for most of it, I just enjoyed the story more. Bella is pretty pathetic, but I couldn’t put it down. Despite being 150+ pages longer, I finished it a lot faster, too.

Again, the plot isn’t very exciting. Victoria is still at large and actively seeking out Bella, but nothing really happens with her. There’s not even a single face-off with her. It’s a very background type conflict, but at least Bella seems afraid of her this time. Most of the story is just focused on Bella’s extremely frightening post-breakup behavior. There’s 3 months of blank pages, because Bella apparently did nothing but breathe until Charlie finally said he’d had enough. Bella was more zombie than vampire, but once she starts hanging out with Jacob she starts to come to life.

I adore Jacob. I was totally on Team Jacob until I read Breaking Dawn the first time. However, now I can see that Bella was definitely never interested in him in that way, so there is no Team Jacob. She admits that she wants to “stake a claim” on him a few times, so that she won’t be alone and to make him happy. It’s actually kind of scary how attached she becomes to Jacob in Edward’s absence. She is 100% codependent and cannot live without a teenage boy by her side at every moment.

Let’s not even go into Bella’s hallucinations that she puts her life in danger to have! That’s probably the most disturbing thing about this book. While I wanted to slap some sense into her, I couldn’t stop reading. Bella is such a train wreck. There’s two particular moments that had me going WTF?!

“Was I dying again, then? I didn’t like it — this wasn’t as good as the last time. (pg 364)” I’m sure that needs no explanation.

Then there was: “I couldn’t comprehend what this human woman was doing here, totally at ease, surrounded by vampires. (pg 463-4)” Um, Bella, seriously?! Her whole goal in life is to be surrounded by vampires forever and ever…

Anyway, I’m probably more in love with this series than I’m letting myself believe. I do think I like New Moon better than the original, but it also features my favorite characters (Alice and Charlie) more, so perhaps I’m biased.