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.
August 31, 2008 at 7:20 am
I could not agree more. But I had been fed up with Bella for some time. She has always been stupid and I really didn’t expect that much from her name choices. LOL Great review. Mine is here:
http://savvyverseandwit.blogspot.com/2008/08/breaking-dawn.html
I liked the host much better, my review for that is here if you are interested:
http://savvyverseandwit.blogspot.com/2008/08/host.html
August 31, 2008 at 7:42 am
You pretty much listed all of the reasons why I wasn’t crazy about Breaking Dawn. But I also find that the whole saga doesn’t hold up well to criticism or analysis — you have to read strictly at the surface level, or it just crumbles.
I did like The Host better, though. She still has a tendency to go on and on sometimes, but in general I think the writing is much better.
August 31, 2008 at 8:27 am
I hear you on the surface reading. You really do have to read it on the surface. The Host was better.
August 31, 2008 at 10:22 am
Henry seems to be enjoying the book… LOL
August 31, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Definitely a surface read. I also agree that The Host was better. It definitely kept me interested and wondering what was going to happen.
I was so excited for Breaking Dawn to come out, but after the wedding chapter I got tired of it quickly. I agree with all your points above. It was like she just ran out of ideas. :-( I actually quit reading about three-quarters through and flipped to the end, just to get it over with.
August 31, 2008 at 5:19 pm
I had a hard time reading it cover to cover, I found myself skipping over about 10 pages at a time in various points of the book to get to the end.
September 3, 2008 at 9:05 am
I have heard other people talk about it the way you did, but I guess I felt differently about it. For starters, I did take it as a surface read from the get-go. I read Twilight a week and a half ago and finished Breaking Dawn today. Though I agree that the other books were more suspenseful, the sap in me loved this one, too. Kind of like – SPOILER ALERT!!! – the epilogue to the last Harry Potter book; though it may have been an easy way out, it was soothing to my reader’s soul all the same. Yes, there were a lot of convenient deus ex machinas, if you will, but sometimes I like that in a book.
I agree that Bella is a bit of a twit, but I spend my life around teenage girls (I teach high school English), and a LOT of them are like that, especially in first-love mode.
I thought the fight scene was drawn out for too long, and the whole thing with the Voltari got on my last nerve in general. But I was happy with the neatly wrapped-up endings for Jacob, Renesmee (I hate the name too), and the rest of the Cullen clan. Along the lines of other teen lit, I liked the happy ending on this one. Teenagers have enough angst in their own lives; at least they can live vicariously in fiction once in a while. :)
Jess
September 3, 2008 at 5:19 pm
I agree with pretty much everything that was already said. I never went into the series looking for anything more than brain floss but Breaking Dawn didn’t even deliver on that after a certain point.
As for The Host…I picked it up the week it was released, read 30 pages and then got bored. I’ll have to give it another shot, especially after hearing some of the positive feedback on that one.
Thanks ladies!
September 10, 2008 at 3:54 pm
I thought the name for the baby was horrible too. It was really neat that a name was given to Bella’s talent and she was able to use it to help her new family but I didn’t really buy into how easy it was for her to make the change. She should have been a little more out of control, I think.