The fourth, and final, installment in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series was a huge disappointment to me. Meyer isn’t a particularly fabulous writer but she managed to hook onto a great story idea. The idea captured both YA and adult readers, and my reading of Twilight was really good. New Moon was good, Eclipse was good; but Breaking Dawn really killed the series. Instead of going out with a bang, it kind petered out and halfway through the book I thought, “okay… so why am I only on page 500 if everything is hunky-dory?”

I was borrowing the book from a friend of a friend, so I only had it for three days, but I’m pretty glad I did. My friend who bought the book (she’s bought all of them because she loved the first ones), she has gotten so fed up with Breaking Dawn that she has quit reading it halfway through. In fact, even Henry couldn’t understand why I was tearing through the book so quickly (excuse the cellphone picture). To be honest, it was just to get it over and done with (which is a terrible way to feel about a book).

ALERT! ALERT! SPOILERS AHEAD! SPOILER ALERT!!

Have you been sufficiently warned? SPOILERS AHEAD! Okay. That being said, I was so fed up with Bella by page 150 that I wanted to slap her. And I was so annoyed at Edward for still treating her like a balloon in a thumbtack factory! Then DUH you’re pregnant… what did you think would happen? And DEAR GOD the name! Who names a child Renesme? I don’t care if it’s a combination of your mom’s name and your mother-in-law’s name… that’s just stupid! And guess what her middle name is: Carlie, a mixture of Charlie and Carlise, her father and her father-in-law. UGH.

Then Jacob, well, I was expecting him to imprint on Vampire Bella… and I think it was kinda a write-off how Bella got out of that whole first-year-being-a-vampire craziness. Too easy and not even properly explained. I did like her powers and how she learned to use them though. And I thought Alice was brilliant; the only problem is because it’s first-person-Bella-narrative, we didn’t get to see anything when Alice went away.

END SPOILERS — MY FINAL COMMENTS BEGIN HERE!!

Maybe my expectations were too high?

To be honest, I don’t think this was Stephenie Meyer’s strongest work. I think she needed a way to end the series quickly before it got too old. Because everything was always starting to look Happy Ending and she sort of ran out of kinks to throw in their works. My favourite storyline was New Moon because something totally new and exciting was introduced (werewolves!).

I suppose now I should read The Host, Stephenie Meyer’s first adult novel, to compare her writing styles. To be honest, I don’t think her YA style is very strong — just the subject was quite unique for a YA.