Book Review: New Moon

This is the second book in the Twilight Saga. The first time I read it (I think I'm on the fifth now), it was the hardest book of the four, but this time I was actually anxious to get to it.

I read once in an article about what editors and agents hate that one should never open a book with a dream, but Stephenie does it here with great effect, showing us right away that Bella dreads aging because Edward never will. But soon that becomes the least of her worries. When an accident gets out of hand at Bella's eighteenth birthday party, Edward realizes anew how much his and his family's presence in her life endangers her...and a few days later, they are gone, as if they'd never been - except, of course, for the ripping agony of grief in which Bella drowns for the next months. When she finally begins to resurface, she renews her acquaintance with Jacob Black, and with him, werewolves come onto the scene. But just as things are starting to settle down again, Edward's psychicly gifted sister Alice shows up, having seen Bella jump from a cliff and interpreted it as attempted suicide when it was, in reality, a nearly fatal attempt at cliff diving. She finds Bella alive, but before she can tell the rest of her family, Edward's other sister Rosalie, who has never liked Bella, informs him of Alice's vision. Following up on his earlier declaration that he cannot live in a world where Bella does not exist, Alice sees him making his way to Italy to ask for death at the hands of the Volturi (a kind of vampire royal family, the ones who enforce the rule of secrecy and anything related to it). Alice and Bella go after him, but if they don't make it in time, they will likely die, too.

Things I Love
1. The characterization of Bella that gets accomplished while Edward is mostly out of the picture. She's not orbiting around him anymore, so we see more of what she's like.
2. Again, the atmosphere, though it's slightly different from that of the first book. In New Moon, the focus isn't on the world that still lives on in modern Forks but the town itself and the area around it, saturated with quiet magic that no one feels except those who are a part of it.
3. Charlie. He was in the background during Twilight, but now he becomes a more fleshed out and developed character. He's an ordinary guy, never guessing that his daughter is dealing with some very extraordinary things, just loving her and trying to protect her. There's something about his and Bella's relationship that is really poignant.
4. The werewolves. Again, a departure from the norm, but I can't say much on that lest I give too much away.
5. Alice, when she enters. I just love Alice; I always have.

Things That Could Have Been Better
Again, only one: the portrayal of Bella's grief. I've never loved and lost, and it occurred to me this last read-through that maybe the difference, the physical sense of pain, is partly because she loved a vampire - no normal teenage relationship, to say the least. The description of a hole in the chest works a few times, but after a while it loses its effectiveness. Still...

Five stars!