Title: Breaking Dawn
Author: Stephanie Meyer
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 756
Rating: 3.5/5
Well, here we are. We’ve finally reached the end of the Twilight series.
I have thoughts about these books. So many thoughts.
I went into the series sceptical, and I was only planning on reading the first book to see what all of the fuss was about. I ended up getting absorbed into the story line and binging through the first couple of books, but it seemed as though their quality kept on dropping from book to book.
By the time we get to this one, all of the characters feel like imitations of themselves, and it’s super obvious that you’re reading a book. It was never a case of suspending my disbelief because my disbelief had already been nerfed.
We kick things off with Bella getting married to Edward, even though she’s in love with Jacob too. I’m not really sure why, because he sexually assaulted her a couple of times and then kept on gaslighting her until she eventually decided he was right and that she had feelings for him. That whole thing left me feeling like I needed a shower.
But Edward doesn’t come out looking too hot either, which is a shame because he was one of my favourite characters until he became a slimy greaseball.
Oh, and Bella gets pregnant. It’s explained as though it’s perfectly possible, but given that Edward doesn’t breathe or have a pulse, I find it strange to think that he had functioning sperm when the rest of his body didn’t work. Plus, don’t you need blood to flow into a penis if you want an erection?
Perhaps now you can see what I mean about my disbelief being nerfed.
I don’t want to talk too much more about the plot, because even though these books are a good few years old by now, there are still people who haven’t read the books or watched the movies. I feel as though that age might be the cause of a few of the problems that I had, because I’m pretty sure that they haven’t aged well.
I haven’t watched the movies yet either, although I plan to. It’ll be interesting to see how the books were adapted for the screen, because I feel like it’d be too uncomfortable to watch a sexual assault taking place.
What else? See, this is the problem – the books have been getting longer and longer, but they’re not backing that up with extra content. It’s the J. K. Rowling Robert Galbraith problem all over again.
And yet I have this thing where each or my reviews consists of the same number of words that the book has pages, and so that leaves me struggling to make up the word count when the book isn’t that interesting. It doesn’t happen often, but it happened here.
I suppose I could mention that I listened to it via an audio book rather than reading the physical book, and that was probably for the best. It was a decent production and that helped to hold my attention, and it also meant that I could listen to it a little bit at a time while I jogged around my office.
I’ll also be continuing with Stephanie Meyer, including by reading the two or three spin-offs that I’ve heard of. I’m more interested in reading Host, though, which I’ve heard is pretty good. Hopefully it’s not plagued by the same problems that we have in this one.
All in all, it’s not the most satisfactory ending to a series, but it is at least an ending. I’m glad that I read it, but I think I could just as easily have stopped after the first book. In fact, that would have left me with a more positive opinion, but I don’t think that would have been fair. I went from thinking the books were garbage to finding them pretty good and then completely losing faith in the execution.
It turns out that the perception of the Twilight series as being trashy YA might be truer than it initially seemed, which is a shame. I’d love to say that I got on well with the series and I guess I found it slightly less unenjoyable than I was expecting, but it still let me down.
Perhaps that’s the most damning thing I can say about it. I went in with low expectations and it still didn’t live up to them.