Breaking Dawn

Title: Breaking Dawn
Author: Stephenie Meyer
Pages: 754
Published: 2008

“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 a 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, she has endured a tumultuous year of temptation, loss, and strife to reach the ultimate turning point. Her imminent choice to either join the dark but seductive of immortals or pursue a fully human life has become the thread from which the fate 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, the scattered and torn in New Moon and Eclipse – seem ready to heal and knit together, could they be destroyed…forever?”

So, I’ve finally got my grubby, little hands on a copy of Breaking Dawn, the sequel to Eclipse, which is the sequel to New Moon, which is the sequel to Twilight {Thanks, Mom and Dad!}. I was disenfranchised with Eclipse, but I wanted to see how the series ended, although I had read all of the reviews for Breaking Dawn, so I already knew the basic plot. I had heard a lot of bad things about Breaking Dawn, what with its broken beds, awkward sexual innuendo, and major plot let downs, and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. {Opps, forgot to warn you. There are going to be spoilers in this review.}

So, we rejoin Bella, Edward, and gang in the last novel of the series. Bella’s still kind of whinny, but, surprisingly, I liked her better. I couldn’t exactly put my finger on it, but maybe I’ve built up tolerance towards her. Edward, mysterious Edward, is still the servant to Bella’s every whim, and Jacob is still stumbling around like an abused dog. One who can’t get it through his head that Bella was always going to end up Edward.

“Edward. Edward. My life and his were twisted into a single strand. Cut on, and you cut both. If he were gone, I would not be able to live through that. If I were gone, he wouldn’t live through it, either. And a world without Edward seemed completely pointless. Edward had to exist.” {pg. 373}

I was engrossed for about 600 pages, so much that I read the whole thing in a day. Unlike Eclipse, there is a plot line, albeit weak. But it’s interesting, and I was ready for a big fight between the Cullens and the Volturi. I never got one, because once Aro sees Renesmee, the two groups are once again the best of friends. I feel like Meyer hit the 700-page mark, and she realized she needed to wrap this sucker up right now.

I know quite a few people complained about Bella getting pregnant, especially since Meyer said that vampires could not have babies. I guess those spoiling reviews gave me a heads up because, while it wasn’t explained the way I wanted it too, I didn’t have a problem with the idea. I had a problem with how it was executed.

This baby was killing her! It was feeding on her blood, breaking her ribs and pelvis bone, and slowly killing her, and I totally sided with Edward on this one, except for the whole “I’ll even let her have a litter of pups,” which is just down right creepy and goes against his protective, Bella-is-mine nature. Then Bella, who fainted during blood typing in Twilight, managed to down gallons of blood to sustain the thing that’s killing? Kind of a 180, if you ask me.

My biggest complaints are that, one, the Twilight series has always been Bella’s story, but in the one “book” I was actually interested in reading, it was told from Jacob’s point of view. I definitely like  Jacob better than Edward or Bella, and I liked reading from his point of view, but I wish Meyer had told Breaking Dawn all from Bella’s point of view and then gone back a rewrote it from Jacob’s point of view like she’s doing with Edward in Midnight Sun.

Two, I realize that imprinting is an involuntary action, but Jacob imprinting on Renesmee was just plain creepy. Meyer may have wanted a happy ending, but…ew!

A close second to that, I feel like life was too easy for Bella in the end. In Eclipse, she realized she was going to have to give up her friends, her family, and everything she knows to be with Edward. Yet, in Breaking Dawn, she still gets to have a “need to know” relationship with Charlie, she doesn’t like the taste of blood {another 180} despite being a vampire, and she get’s to be a mommy to the prettiest baby there ever was. I like happy endings, but this was a little too happy.{Example, Edward is calling Jacob “my brother, my son.”}

Still, I really enjoyed reading about Bella’s change and the discovery of her special power. And in comparison to Eclipse, Breaking Dawn was much better.

Rating: 4
Balance of Opinion: A Life in Books; Becky’s Book Reviews {Part Two}; Chain Reading; Em’s Bookshelf; Girls Just Reading;  In the Shadow of Mt. TBR; Library Queue; Reading, Writing, and Ranting; Stephanie’s Written Word