Book Review

The other book I read this weekend was "Breaking Dawn" by Stephenie Meyer. This is the final book in the Twilight series (YAY!)

What can I say . . . I liked about 1/3 of the book. Most of what I liked was written from Jacob's point of view. His thoughts and opinions didn't bother me nearly as much as Bella's.

With that said - here's the thing I really dislike and is prevalent throughout the series. I don't think Bella is realistic in her emotions about becoming a vampire. I understand love is a powerful thing, I love my own husband dearly and would jump through fire for him, but I would have also been concerned about leaving my family and friends and all the other human things that would be given up. Bella's character rarely if at all thinks about the difficult decision she is about to make and how it will affect her family. She doesn't have a conflict when it comes to the literal life and death decision she has made - she has made it and accepted it. The only time she waivers is when she finds out how good the sex is between her and Edward and she is afraid it won't be the same after she is changed. I'm sorry but sex is pretty far down on the list of things I would be thinking about if I was poised to give up my humanity.

I also find that the conflicts that Meyer does come up with are forced and utterly hard to believe even in the fictional world she has created. She also made it too easy for Bella to transition from human to vampire. If this was slowing her story down then she should have created a separate book for the encounter with the Volturi. Sometime I felt that she was just writing to see how many pages she could write since each book is longer than the previous one.

As I have written in the past - the central idea of the story was good and so much good material could have come from it. But just because you have a degree in English Literature does not mean you can write. I am so glad to be finished with this series - I really wished that I could like more about it, but the utterly lack of maturity in the writing, stretched plot lines, and my dislike of the main character made it hard.

This weekend I actually sucked it up and went to see the movie Twilight - and although there were some things I didn't like (mostly camera angles and too many close-ups) I have to say for the first time ever that the movie was better than the book. Hopefully with a different director for New Moon I might like that movie as well - especially since of the four books I dislike that one the most.

If you would like to read Breaking Dawn you can find it at Barnes and Noble or your local library.