New Moon (The Twilight Saga, Book 2) Review

This book is an emotional mess! Edward is gone after having ditched Bella at the end of the last book. Bella once again violates the norm of how a high school girl typically deals with a breakup. Instead of being bummed, eating ice cream and bashing the ex with friends and moving on, Bella slips into a virtually catatonic depression. So much so, that she literally misses 6 months or so of her life. This is ridiculous! She met the guy, was sleeping with him within a day or two of their first date, professing undying love right off the bat, and the world ends with his departure! Yes, high school girls can be a bit melodramatic, but seriously?!

Read this passage... Charlie (her dad) is talking to Alice (Edward's sister) about Bella's depression. Bella interjects a thought in the flow of the conversation for the sake of the reader:

"It was like someone had died--like I had died. Because it had been more than just losing the truest of true loves, as if that were not enough to kill anyone. It was also losing a whole future, a whole family--the whole life that I'd chosen..."

She's 18... most people these days don't get married until they're around 30. She has a LOT of time to find another love (ahem, Jacob), get married, have a family... She's merely being melodramatic!

Then, Edward reappears and says he had never stopped loving her. She immediately welcomes him back into her life (and her bed) without hesitation! Really?! Here sits Jacob, a sweet guy who has treated her with nothing but respect and was there for her when no one else was... he brought her out of her depression, was able to make her smile again, loved her even as the damaged goods she was... And who does she choose?!?! The guy who left her wandering in the forest! Even when Jacob was going through the most horrible and terrifying phase of his life, he managed to make time for Bella, to see her and make sure she was ok. And at the end of it all, she picks the guy who abandoned her, because she's brainwashed herself into thinking she and Edward are soul mates.

These books are awful. Stephanie Meyer has a poor perception of what true love is and doesn't understand the teenage psyche well enough to be writing about it.