Book Review: New Moon by Stephenie Meyer

I first started reading the Twilight series on the recommendation of a friend. I vaguely enjoyed the first book (you can read my review here), but I was annoyed with the way the main characters were handled at times. You can read more about that in my review of that book, but it did influence the way I felt about this book.

I was immensely bored by this chapter in the series. Bella, the female lead, has been abandoned by her vampire boyfriend Edward. She spends the first several chapters being gloomy and over-dramatic. She eventually does try to drag herself out of her pit of despair and find new friends. Of course, the new friend she finds has a deep, dark secret as well.

I had a few problems with the book already at this point:

1. Bella spends time deliberately being irresponsible and borderline destructive to herself because of her grief over being dumped by Edward. This is in no way an appropriate thing for teenage girls to read. Teen girls are already over-dramatic when it comes to boys (I can say this because I once was an over-dramatic teenage girl) – they don’t need an author giving them the illusion that this is a normal way to behave after the end of a relationship. (If you’ve read my review of Twilight, you’ll know I had a similar problem with the portrayal of teen love in that novel.)

2. Bella’s new friend Jacob has a secret. This “secret” is kept hidden for many, many chapters. However, it is painfully obvious from the start (even without reading any press about the upcoming sequel to the film adaptation of Twilight) what the secret is. When it’s finally revealed, it’s made out to be this big “a-ha” moment, which it definitely is not.

Continuing on…there’s a whole big sequence at the end which could be considered spoilers, so I won’t go into it. Suffice it to say that it wasn’t exciting enough to make up for the rest of the book. It also features more of the unstable, whiny post-breakup Bella.

I will be reading Book 3, Eclipse, because my friend sent me all three sequels and I feel like I owe it to her and her hefty Post Office receipt. However, if it’s half as banal and whiny as New Moon, I may have to resign myself to the ranks of the Anti-Twilight crowd.

If you are interested in reading the book for some reason, it is available in paperback or in a Kindle Edition.