Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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823 of 966 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Heartbreak of Heathcliff Proportions, August 3, 2008
I've only recently entered the Twilight fold. Having initially read reviews of the series in library journals and having heard passionate testimonials from avid fans, I thought I would give it a try.
Inexorably, I fell absolutely and positively in love with the first three Twilight books. I read them (the first time, that is) in three days. Then, like a junkie, I feverishly searched the media for news on the movie, the books, and all things Stephanie Meyers.
Stephenie Meyer's books were my brand of heroin.
So, like millions of other strung out addicts, I lined up until midnight to score the ultimate fix. The final installment was in my hands.
I didn't know I was holding a ticking time bomb in my hands. One which would ultimately implode, destroying the magic spell of Meyer's world and the intense affection I held for its inhabitants.
Like many of you, I kept asking myself: "Who actually wrote this book? What happened? This must be a cruel joke...I will wake up tomorrow, and learn that Breaking Dawn is an elaborate hoax perpetrated to discredit Meyer."
Meyer has commented on her love of Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Having read these books dozens of times, I saw glimmers of their bittersweet brilliance in the first three Twilight books. I cried for Bella as I had cried for Cathy, Elizabeth, and Juliet.
And then I read Breaking Dawn.
For the first one hundred pages, I was entranced. I couldn't put the book down. I thought, "Finally, Bella and Edward can consummate their love, against seemingly impossible odds! Finally, the big payoff is here!"
Then, the heartbreak began...
Remember when Bella's heart cracks in two in Eclipse? Mine shattered the moment I read the words "little nudger."
When I read the first three books, I felt seventeen again. The butterflies in my stomach, the blinding tunnel vision, and the intense emotions experienced during that first love washed over me during Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse.
When Jacob left at the end of Eclipse, I cried. The price of true love was justly paid with his departure.
Price...A lot of the reviews I've read here aptly speak of "paying a price." Intense, obsessive, passionate love--a love of the Wuthering Heights variety, anyway--demands an exacting price. Bella cannot have Jacob and Edward, just as Catherine cannot have both Edgar and her beloved Heathcliffe.
The price of an extraordinary love is an ordinary life.
But the price--the sacrifice--makes the purchase more dear, makes it all the sweeter.
In Breaking Dawn, what price is paid? Bella gets Edward. Bella gets Jacob. Bella gets beauty and grace. Bella gets a baby. Bella gets a fairytale cottage. Bella gets all the powerful trappings of vampiric power without all the burden of newborn instincts. Bella gets to keep her human family. Bella gets Meyer's "perfect ending."
The perfect ending comes at what price?
The price is the love story, the plot, and the character development. The price is seeing Jacob turn from a noble suitor who knows when to bow out, into a toddler's pet.
The price is seeing the endearingly vulnerable Bella turn into a perfect shell of her former self.
The price is seeing Edward, who was once a continuously smoldering cauldron of desire, degraded to a level of abject affliction.
The price is watching Charlie turn from a loving and protective father into a "don't need to know" Homer Simpson.
The price is having to stomach a bloodbath,a mutant birth which rivals the absurdity of the alien reptile baby delivery of the "V" TV miniseries of the 1980's. (Remember that one, gentle reader?)
Bella's surrender of her human life to Edward should have ended intimately with his lips caressing her throat, not with fountains of blood spewing from her mouth as Jacob watches.
The price is too steep--much too heartbreaking--for me to pay.
My opinion is inconsequential. It matters to no one but me, but...
Not that you asked but...Ms. Meyer, you are a fantastically talented writer. You have the power to spin a story which transcends the ordinary and transports teens and housewives alike into a world of sparkling, amorous, and compelling fantasy. You are the real deal.
What hast thou wrought?
I know that you, like any writer worth his or her salt, wrote this book for yourself, for your own satisfaction. You wrote the story of Breaking Dawn for you.
I'm just so heartbroken that it wasn't written for me.
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121 of 140 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
So bad, I want to rewrite it myself, June 10, 2009
I started reading this series after I heard a rave review on NPR during their "Guilty Pleasures" segment. The middle-aged gentleman described Twilight with such enthusiasm that I couldn't resist temptation. I bought the four-book set and settled in for a long weekend of reading.
Three days and 2400 pages later, I'd finished the four novels. I adored Twilight, tried not to slap whiny Bella during New Moon, and mostly skimmed through Eclipse trying to get to something interesting. Finally, I got to Breaking Dawn. I have never been so let down by a book in my entire life. I don't even need to go into all the ways that this book was horrible - the other reviewers have done that well. But, here I go anyway:
Wedding - So, Bella's wedding to Edward was not what she wanted, but what she was willing to trade for sex and immortality. The wedding itself was not her vision and in no way represented their unique love, but was instead a fantasy created fully by Alice's vision.
Honeymoon - Meyer is telling us that sex is scary and awful. You will have a lot of pain your first time and your husband, who puts you up on a pedestal, will hate himself for "hurting" you, no matter how yummy delicious it is. Oh, and once you do get some, it's pretty much the only thing you'll want, and your new hubby will reject you, mercilessly, due to his own hang ups. Woo! I gotta get me some of that!
Also, how come it's either a little french kissing or sex? How come no one ever talks about alllll that space in between those two extremes? What a perfect place for her to talk about sex and the implications of it, especially given her target audience.
Pregnancy - You will get pregnant the very first time you have sex. Pregnancy is the most horrible state you will ever experience. It will be stunningly painful as your body is taken over by something that hurts you, and tries to kill you, and eventually chews its way out of you. The bloodbath of child birth is fine - but it says a lot, to me, about Meyer that she can't write the sex, but can write the gore. Or maybe it's about society, and not Meyer at all. Take your pick.
Renesmee - Say it out loud. I dare you. Look, I get what Meyer was trying to convey here about the beauty of having a child, the connection that a newborn's family feels to the child and how fleeting childhood is. But come on! The massive gaps in logic and leaps of faith it takes you to get here are stunning. Stunning. And impossible.
Jacob - Sigh. Poor Jacob. This boy never had an ounce of pride, he submitted it all to Bella, only to find himself a pedophile in the end. How utterly freaking awful. (and yeah, I tried to go with the whole "it's fiction, not pedophilia" but I just couldn't get there. It was creepy.)
The Cullens - Who? No seriously though, Edward had a family? Where were they after page 150?
Renee and Charlie - So, while Renee has been the primary parent and the person that Bella is closest to for the entire series, suddenly she's just...absent. Laaaame. And suddenly Charlie is Bella's first concern, but we've been given absolutely nothing by way of character development to buy into this. Again, I say: Come on!
Editing: Look, I don't know who edited this book, but ZOMG! fire that person. There were so many errors it was distracting. Dialog tagging: use it. Also, adverbs are not your friends. If Bella "shyly" does one more thing, I'm going beat her with her own arm. If you have to tell us that people are chuckling, giggling, that their eyes are "tightening" (wth does that even mean?) then you're failing at description. If you must tell and not show, read some Willa Cather. She gets away with it. You don't. So stop.
Tone: I'm guessing that Meyer took a break from Twilight land to write "The Host" and that's why the entire tone of this novel is off. It just doesn't even sound like it was written by the same person.
At the end of this novel, I wanted to rewrite the whole thing myself. I wanted to see why Bella decided that she would marry Edward. I wanted her to give a damn about the wedding and see some reverence in it. I wanted to see a real deepening in her relationship with Alice. I wanted Esme to be more than just a paper doll mother figure. I wanted a real, honest to goodness sex scene that lived up to three freaking novels worth of some of the steamiest kisses ever. I wanted Bella to pay a price for some of her choices. I wanted that epic battle with the Volturi to actually happen. I wanted someone to die. Meyer cheated us out of the thoughtful endings that we get when good triumphs over evil. That's what makes life sweet, and makes us appreciate what we have - working for it, sacrificing for it.
Bella would have actually wanted to marry Edward. She would have cared about the decorations and Alice would have developed into a real sister, and not some overblown party planner. There would have been real sex - not smutty, but real, nonetheless. Pregnancy would have disappeared. Bella would have had to make the choice - between having babies and having Edward. She would have been cruel to be kind and given Jacob his freedom. Jacob would have grown and gotten over her, and moved on and found real love with someone who loved him back - maybe even Leah, since that ground was laid pretty well. Bella would have spent months being a newborn, filled with nothing but bloodlust. Jessica would be her first victim. The Cullens would have worked tirelessly to help her transform, and we could have gotten to know them all so much better. Rosalie might have died, doing something selfless for once in her life. That would have been doubly meaningful if Meyer rewrites the whole series from Edward's POV (ala Midnight Sun, which in rough draft form is head and shoulders better than Breaking Dawn.) Bella would have to give up Charlie and Renee for a while, but eventually they would be able to be in her life, altho in a much more limited way. There are a million possibilities that could have had a very nice happy ending, with a bit of bitter thrown in with the sweet.
Meyer is a great storyteller and an okay writer. If she gets a better editor and learns some discipline, she could be very good. I found this particular book to be a total betrayal of the earlier books, which is why my review is so harsh. Overall, I hope she keeps going, and I *really* hope she keeps going with Midnight Sun, which so far, I love.
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77 of 91 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not what I expected but..., August 14, 2008
Breaking Dawn was definitely not what I expected to end a series of books that I truly became engulfed in and loved. However, I wasn't disappointed. I honestly believe that Stephanie Meyer wrote a book filled with the happiness of writing something you truly enjoy. So it's not my place to quarrel what someone else has imagined. The fact of the matter is, is that this is a work of fiction. In the world that Meyer created where vampires do exist, Bella could only live for Edward, she could get pregnant, and she could have the ultimate happy ending. Via crazy twist and turns! The fact that people can get so worked up over meaning and tone and analyze a book to death is beyond me, especially when its a story about vampires, werewolves and becoming immortal! I'm amazed at how some people can't stretch their imaginations enough, who cares about Bella being married and having sex by 18. That world of fiction is not the tangible one we exist in. Meyer even makes that clear in Eclipse, when Bella mentions how in a normal world she would be with Jake. But she isn't in a normal world, under normal circumstances and so belongs with Edward. Besides, if all you're worried about is some crazy intention on the part of Stephanie Meyer to condone getting married and having sex at a young age, I think this book is the least of your worries. Bella and Edward may be young but they hardly fall into the category of horny uneducated teenagers who have sex because everyone else is. How about we take a closer look at the parents who are "parenting" these teenagers instead of pointing a finger at an author who wrote a book and gave you the CHOICE to read it. I chose to read this book, and just because Bella and Edward had sex, doesn't mean I'm running out the door with Stephanie Meyers encouragement. People can get so caught up in their virtues and ethics that they forget to think for themselves.
Anyway, this is supposed to be a review for a book I did enjoy. I'm incredibly glad Bella got her incredibly perfect happy ending. The world and life can be so unbalanced and cruel that I don't need to be reminded of the "realities" of it. For once, for freaking once, someone had the guts to just give me what I wanted. A sweet ending, to an incredible love story. The end.
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