Review-Breaking Dawn (Spoilers!)

Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



So I finally reached the end of the Twilight series. I had intended to finish reading this before the movie came out, but I was finished with the first part which was all the movie covered, so I was good.

The book starts with Bella preparing for her wedding to her vampire beau, Edward. I really like how fast-paced this part was and how it wasn't dragged out. I enjoyed reading about their wedding and got a bit teary-eyed as Bella said goodbye to her father before she and Edward left on their honeymoon. Of course the highlight is when good old Jacob, BFF, shows up because of course he wouldn't miss his best friend Bella get married. But when he finds out what she and Edward plan to do to consummate their marriage, he isn't too happy and has to be removed from the wedding.

Edward then whisks Bella off to Isle Esme, a private island for their honeymoon. Again, these were some of my favorite parts of the book (and the movie!) I feel that this is when Ms. Meyer does her best writing, when she's writing the romantic elements between Bella and Edward. This part ends with Bella realizing that she's pregnant and vowing not to let anyone do anything to her baby.

The next part is Part 2: Jacob. Despite the fact that Jacob is my favorite character, I disliked that he had a whole section told from his point of view. All of the other books had been solely from Bella's point of view, I figured this one should have been too, but whatever. Parts of this section really dragged. I don't like Jacob as much when he's in his wolf-form and when he's "sharing thoughts" with the rest of the pack, which is the majority of what happens. The best parts of course is when he's with the Cullens and his reactions and interactions with Bella's pregnancy. He's there for the whole thing and is able to figure out what the baby wants when none of the other supposedly super smart Cullens could do. At the end of this part, the baby is born, Bella dies, and Edward injects her with his venom.

The last part is back to Bella's point of view. She has to silently endure the pain of the venom spreading through her body and when she awakes, she's now a vampire. I was really excited to read about how Bella would be like as a vampire and while certain parts were interesting, I thought Ms. Meyer took the easy way out by having Bella adjust oh-so-very-well to vampire life. This section is mostly about their upcoming battle with the Volturi. As I wrote about in my New Moon review, anything dealing with the Volturi is not appealing to me. I feel that this is when the writing gets sloppy and drags on, and there were about a million vampires introduced here that I cared nothing about. I enjoyed the battle scenes with James and co. in Twilight, and Victoria and the newborns in Eclipse, but I can't stand these scenes with the Volturi. This one was even worse than the one in New Moon because in this one there is all this build up for NOTHING.

Once we finally got passed all that Volturi nonsense, we then say goodbye to Bella and Edward and their family. I am so glad that I finally gave the Twilight series a chance this year and got to know these characters. While they (with the exception of Jacob) are certainly not my favorite characters or the most well-written, I enjoyed reading about them and I will miss them. I liked the movie a lot more than the book and I look forward to the second part coming out next year.



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Challenges: 100 Books in a Year, Young Adult Reading Challenge
Source: purchased

Breaking Dawn Part 1 Premiere

Tonight I was able to see an advance screening of Breaking Dawn Part 1. omg, it was amazing!!!! I loved it! And I'm going to see it again on Saturday with my boyfriend! Can't wait!

It's Monday, What Are You Reading? (33)

I'm still reading the glorious trainwreck that is Breaking Dawn. I'm about 500 pages in and after a couple of slow parts, it finally picked up and I couldn't put it down over the weekend. I finished the first 2 parts (which is where I assume the Part 1 movie will end at) and contemplated holding off on reading the last part until right before the final movie comes out, but no, that wasn't going to happen. I still have about 300 more pages to go, so I doubt I'll be done by Thursday (which is when I'm seeing the movie) but we'll see!

Review-Eclipse

Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Finally finished Eclipse aka The One in Which Edward Remains Dull, Bella Remains Pitiful, and Jacob Remains Awesome.

So it took me almost a month to read this book, not because it wasn't good, but because I haven't had a lot of time to read lately. I usually try to read at least a chapter in a book before I go to bed, but these books have like 25+ pages in a chapter and that's just not gonna happen without me falling asleep. So it was slow going, but I'm finally done!

So, this is now my favorite in the Twilight series. Bella is still a pathetic shell of a girl. I hate how she's always so angry at Charlie and Jacob for stuff, but when Edward does something (like taking parts out of her truck so she wouldn't be able to visit Jacob and bribing Alice to baby-sit her) she's quick to forgive him. She has no backbone whatsoever when it comes to him.

Jacob, as I said, remains awesome in every way, except his one tragic flaw, that he's in love with Bella. I really cannot understand this at all, since she's as dull as dishwater, he needs someone as feisty and vivacious as he is.

We find out Rosalie's backstory in this book, which was very interesting. I already liked Rosalie (since she can't stand Bella) and her backstory made me want to learn more about her. We also find out Jasper's backstory, which I didn't enjoy as much, and it kinda dragged the story a bit. It does set up the whole conflict with the newborns and all, but I found that whole part of the story kind of meh.

I also really liked the fight scene between Victoria and Riley, and Edward and Seth. I typically don't like these scenes (see: fight with James in Twilight and then the Volturi nonsense in New Moon) but it was actually quite interesting in this one. We also meet the character of Bree Tanner, one of the newborns. She was intriguing enough to make me want to pick up and read The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner (not any time soon, though.)

My favorite scene though, was the part where Bella, Edward, and Jacob are in the tent during their "camping" trip or whatever it was, and Jacob has to keep Bella warm throughout the night. I loved the whole part. Jacob is so cool, he even made those two Dull Dorises semi-interesting.

The ending of the story came as no surprise, since I am semi-spoiled for Breaking Dawn. I get that Bella is so in love because Edward is OMG, just the most beautifulest vampire evah!!!! but I just don't get why she's so willing to give up her human life to become a vampire. Well, I guess I can understand. She treats all the people in her life (Charlie, Renee, her friends at school) like dog doo that got smeared on the bottom of her shoe, so I guess it's no wonder that she'd rather spend all of eternity with her beloved Cullen clan. Me, personally, I couldn't give up Cokes and chocolate to live off blood for the rest of my life, no matter how fine that man is.

Anywhoo, so I loved this one and can't wait to watch the movie this weekend!



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Source: borrowed from a friend
Challenges: 100 Books in a Year, Young Adult Reading Challenge

Review-New Moon

New Moon by Stephenie Meyer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars






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Okay, so I was all prepared to dislike New Moon. I was told that this is the book where Edward goes away and I was not looking forward to pages upon pages upon pages of Bella's incessant whining and pining. I was also told that this is the book where she starts spending more time with Jacob and we find out more about him. I was all like "No! I don't care about Jacob! I don't want to read about Jacob and learn about his back story." So yeah, I thought New Moon would be a slow read for me.

That was not the case. I actually like this one even better than Twilight. First of all, I loved the way it began with Bella's birthday and the dream with her "grandma", realizing that she would be growing older while Edward remains the same. I loved the birthday party with Bella getting cut and the vampires reacting. I also didn't mind the part where Edward leaves, and I appreciated what SM did to cut out the whining and pining.

So then the best part happens. Bella decides she wants to be reckless so she gets some old, beat up motorcycles and asks Jacob to fix them up for her. They start spending more time together and Jacob becomes her best friend, even though he has a huge crush on her.

I barely paid any attention to Jacob in Twilight. I absolutely LOVED him in this book and he is now my favorite character. He just seems so cute and sweet! I was really hoping for a while that Bella would forget all about sparkle-boy and make Jacob happy by getting with him.

But then sadly, Jacob undergoes his transformation and becomes a werewolf, a werewolf that hunts "bloodsuckers." Even though he is bigger and meaner here, I still liked him. I hate what he does to Bella right at the end (with the motorcycles and Charlie) and I HOPE that he doesn't become a total a$$ in Eclipse. I know that Bella and Edward end up together, and I'm completely fine with that because I agree with Bella: Jacob is too good for her. She and Sparkle can have each other, Jacob needs to be with a more understanding, non-crazy girl (like me.)

Anyways, so the best parts of the book were all the Jacob parts. Eventually something happens where Edward thinks that Bella has died, so he decides to go to the Volturi and have himself killed. So Alice gets Bella and they go save him. This part was so boring. I don't care about the Volturi.

Edward and the Cullens come back home and Bella once again wants to become a vampire and has the Cullens vote on whether or not she will become one. Thankfully we get to see more Jacob before the book ends, although this is when he's being a meany again.

All in all, the book was great, all except for about 60 or so pages at the end with all that Volturi stuff. I hope to see more of Jacob in Eclipse. I don't mind werewolf Jacob, I just don't want total meanie Jacob. Even though I don't want them to date, I do like the friendship between he and Bella. He makes her somewhat tolerable.

Theme Thursday (3)

Theme Thursday is a weekly meme hosted by Reading Between Pages...

Theme Thursdays is a fun weekly event that will be open from one thursday to the next. Anyone can participate in it. The rules are simple:

*A theme will be posted each week (on Thursdays)
*Select a conversation/snippet/sentence from the current book you are reading
*Mention the author and the title of the book along with your post
*It is important that the theme is conveyed in the sentence (you don’t necessarily need to have the word)
Ex: If the theme is KISS; your sentence can have “They kissed so gently” or “Their lips touched each other” or “The smooch was so passionate”
*This will give us a wonderful opportunity to explore and understand different writing styles and descriptive approaches adopted by authors.

This week's theme is FURNITURE.

My entry comes from pages 281-282 in my current read, New Moon by Stephenie Meyer:

"Bella?" Jacob whispered anxiously. He caught my elbow as I swayed again, and steered me back to the bed. My legs gave out when I reached the edge, and I plopped into a limp heap on the mattress.

It's Monday, What Are You Reading? (10)

It's Monday, What Are You Reading? is a weekly meme hosted by The Book Journey.

Last week I finished:
1. Diamond Playgirls-Daaimah S. Poole
2. Right Package, Wrong Baggage-Wanda B. Campbell

This week I'm reading:
Finally started New Moon! I'm only on chapter 3 so far, but it's started off better than Twilight. I hope to be finished with it by this weekend so I can go get the movie and watch it.

Up Next:
No clue! There's so much on my TBR, whatever strikes my fancy when I finish New Moon.

Review-Twilight

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars





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Ok, so Twilight. As I said before, I wanted nothing to do with the Twilight series. I've never been into vampires and werewolves and things like that. But then I saw the movie Twilight and I really liked it. So of course, I needed to read the book.

Since I saw the movie, I was spoiled for what would happen in the book. And since I also read up on the movie on Wikipedia (I always do that for movies, just to get more background info on the movie), I spoiled myself for parts of the rest of the series also, although not too much. I've also learned that, while it had seemed that the entire world was in love with Twilight, that's actually not the case. There seem to be a lot of Twilight snark blogs (such as the tumblr, reasoningwithvampires which picks apart the grammar in the books) and the majority of my favorite celebrity gossip blog, OhNoTheyDidnt, is anti-Twilight (although that's not surprising, since they are anti-anything that's not Britney Spears or Lady Gaga.)

Anywho, I was prepared to be thoroughly bored with the book and disgusted by the bad grammar. However, that was not the case. While I suppose there are some grammatical errors, they weren't so bad to jump out at me, so I didn't mind. True, the book is not a literary masterpiece that should be dissected and analyzed in college classrooms, but it held my interest, and that's all that matters to me.

The book tells the story of 17-year-old Bella Swan who moves to the town of Forks, Washington to live with her father. During her time there, Bella meets and falls in love with the mysterious Edward Cullen, who turns out to be a vampire.

I liked the character of Bella for the majority of the book. I did have to roll my eyes at the beginning in which all the boys are falling over themselves to date Bella, who's supposed to be a plain Jane I guess (I picture Bella as Kristen Stewart from the movie, who isn't gorgeous, but I thought she was really pretty as Bella.) I thought Bella was kinda rude towards her father and to her new friends Jessica and that other girl, almost as if she were too good/smart for them, but I could overlook that. Bella started to bug a little bit towards the end of the book, where almost every other word or thought from her was about how much she loved Edward. I found their relationship very sweet and cute, and I get that this is Bella's first real love and that Edward is so beautiful and sparkly, but it just seemed a little much that she was just so in love with him already, so much so that she's already willing to become a vampire for him. I just thought that happened a little too fast.

As for Edward, I had no real beef with him. He seemed really sweet and like a good guy. I'm trying to figure out what he likes so much about Bella except for the fact that her blood smells good. I would've liked to know what exactly they loved about each other, but maybe that's mentioned in one of the other books.

The book did tend to drag at some points and what turns out to be a 500 page novel, easily could've been around 350-400 pages if some of the drivel was taken out. But all in all, I really liked the story and I enjoyed the characters. I'm dying to know more about what happens next in their relationship (I know bits and pieces, but not everything.) I"m a definite Twi-hard or whatever they call themselves now, lol.

Source: borrowed from a friend, but will be purchasing
Challenges Used For: 100 Books in a Year, YA Reading Challenge