Twilight: New Moon

(See previous ranting post about Twilight for what I thought about the first book)
(Plot spoilers, blah blah blah)


This is the first and only time I will read the Twilight saga. I will say that it gets better as it goes along....which is a good thing...because New Moon was the Moon Moon of the Twilight books.

It begins with Bella almost being killed/eaten/attacked/whatever by Edward's vampire family over a paper-cut. Edward then breaks up with her in order to save her from further life-threatening situations. Little does he know that this will send her into an impossible vortex of drama from which her life will never recover. She is depressed. Woefully depressed. So depressed that I wanted to shake the ever living life out of a fictional character and tell her to snap out of it. (Yes, I know that is NOT the way to treat a person who is depressed in real life).

Anyhow...the only way out of her depression is re-kindling a friendship with Jakob, a 15 year old man-boy who has a crush on her. So, basically, she makes herself feel better about feeling unloved by allowing a boy three years younger than her to crush on her big time. Good going there, Bella. Great idea!

Then comes a bunch of stuff that is supposed to be suspenseful, except there's no way that it can be because I already knew the basics about Twilight before reading it (sparkly vampires and half-naked wolf tribe and irrevocable teenage drama-y love). The whole middle part of the book was drudgery. Bella toys with Jakob. And the reader is supposed to care about the disappearances of unnamed characters and wonder what has happened to Jakob and other man-boys from his tribe (sorry, I am not sure how to refer to a 15 year old who is often described in hunky beefy ways. Maybe this would be different if I were reading the book as a 15 year old instead of a 35 year old).

Then Bella does other stupid stuff in order to hear Edward's voice in her head once more. Apparently, his voice appears as an apparition any time she puts her life in danger. Hey, Bella, maybe that's not Edward. Maybe that's just common sense speaking to you. Just a thought.

So fast forward a bit and Bella does something so stupid that it plunges Edward into suicidal thoughts via a psychic. And now the reader forgets all about the other plots that have been established for the prior 2/3s of the book and gets immersed in vampire action (so...basically the same set-up as the last book's pace). And that's how I got hooked into continuing to read the Twilight saga even though I was about 95% done with Bella for 75% of Moon Moon....er, New Moon.

My verdict remains the same from the first book: this is a fun read when it is about vampire wars and whatnot, but as a love story, it makes me want to gag myself at times. As a werewolf story: snooze fest.

P.S. I saw 10 minutes of this movie on t.v. once and could not discern a plot other than "Let's get Jakob to take his shirt off again!"