Title: New Moon
Author: Stephanie Mayer
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 563
Rating: 3.5/5
With New Moon, I continued my foray into the world of Twilight, which I’d always been reluctant to read because of the popular perception of the series and all of the baggage that comes along with it.
Now, I’d never seen the Twilight movies and I didn’t know much about it other than what I’ve picked up from popular culture, and that’s made for an interesting read. What surprised me about New Moon is how the series takes a left turn and is suddenly about werewolves instead of vampires.
Perhaps I should have seen that coming, because there’s plenty of foreshadowing that points towards it. However, I will say that I’m more interested in the vampires than the werewolves, and so perhaps it’s no surprise that I didn’t enjoy this one as much as the first one. If “enjoy” is the right word.
I’m pretty much reading this series out of curiosity, and I’m pleased to say that it’s nowhere near as much of a drag as I was expecting it to be. I know that they’re build as romance novels, but they have a decent amount of mythology and monster stuff in there too. I can see why they’re so popular.
However, I will say that the character development along the way is a double-edged sword. That’s particular true for Jacob, who started out as being pretty likeable and who’s becoming increasingly annoying as the stories go on. Edward has stayed mostly the same, but I think that’s realistic given that he’s a century old.
I think Edward’s relative maturity also highlights Bella’s immaturity, and what’s particularly annoying is that she thinks she’s way more mature and worldly than she is. It’s actually such a problem that I don’t understand why Edward is so fascinated with her. She’s just literally a normal woman, and from the sounds of it, he could take his pick of them.
It’s to the point at which it takes me out of the story because I know that Edward only likes Bella because Meyer wants readers to be able to insert themselves into the story. If she was unrealistically beautiful, people would find it harder to relate to her. But making her relatively normal-looking, at least in the books, makes me wonder what Edward actually sees in her.
Anyways, all of that aside, it’s a reasonably good read if you like this sort of thing, and while I doubt that the Twilight books are for everyone, I’ve certainly read much worse. I think part of it is because a lot o the indie books that I read when I first started my book blog were written by people who’d been big Twilight fans and so this style of story was kind of ten a penny. Stephanie Meyer just did it first.
I don’t think I’ll ever bother revisiting these books and I’m also glad that I picked them up as audio books as opposed to as physical reads. That meant that I tackled them a little bit at a time while jogging and they were never my “main” book. For me, this kind of series is perfect like that. It’s like having a snack between meals, but I wouldn’t want to have it as a main course.