Breaking Dawn By Stephenie Meyer

This review was originally written to go on Toad Hill, but I, Twyla Lee, sneakily stole it to put it up on 3 Evil Cousins. After this review, we just might have to adopt Briar Kasvi.

Breaking Dawn is the fourth, and last book in the Twilight Saga, books focusing on clumsy, lovable Bella Swan, and her supernatural boyfriend, Edward Cullen. If you haven't read these books yet, run away from this review, dash to the store, and pick up Twilight. As Boodle's awesome review expressed, Twilight is super.

See, for the past year, I was totally obsessed with Twilight, loved the characters, the world, the books, obviously. My friends and I made up Twilight games, pretended we were werewolves (go ahead, call us geeky), and just basked in the glory of these books that were, ultimately made of coolness. Bella, in the first three books, was easy to identify with, klutzy, human, and with the luck to be adored by an amazing supernatural being, whom any girl (including me) would easily fall in love with. They were great, with fierce fights between vampire and werewolf, vampire and human, vampire and vampire. So of course, I looked upon the release of Breaking Dawn with mounting anticipation.

I was deeply disappointed.

The first 100 or so pages consisted of little but lengthy descriptions of the birds and the bees, followed by bloody, violent, graphic pain coming to our much loved heroine, Bella. I cringed to read it, disappointed in the lack of interest or focus on the supernatural, feeling it was inappropriate to include so much about sex in a book that was aimed at not just teens, but tweens as well, like us.

True, the second half of the novel improved a good bit, with the introduction of a wonderfully lovable new character (who, by the way, possessed one of the worst names known to man, toad, or vampire), and the reappearance of the Volturi, exciting villains hailing from Italy. Though the resolution to their visit was not as exciting as I wished, I enjoyed watching Bella discover her vampire power.

So. I was just really, really sad to see a series that I loved with so much devotion close with a novel that I found to not be much better than any sappy love story… just… disappointing is clearly the operative word here. It was interesting the way they introduced the point of view of another character, and, living amongst animals, I found it quite a useful insight into the world of wolves. The second part of the book is pretty good, not as good as the first book, and not good enough to redeem the whole thing, but pretty good all the same. I liked learning about all the different vampires.

Anyway. Though I ADORED the first three books, and would certainly give them a full five stars, I feel I have to do this, as an honest reviewer… It pains me to give a book in the twilight saga anything less than a million stars, as the world of vampires, and all but the last book deserve, but I am going to give Breaking Dawn two stars.

And yes. This book has dulled my imagination, spirit, and overwhelming awesomisticness (modesty too, it seems), enough so that I am not even creative enough to come up with anything cooler than stars.

Note: This book is seriously, unpleasantly gruesome, I described one of the scenes to my sixteen year old sister and showed her the passage, and she was cringing and whining (at me, grr) for the rest of the day. I wish I hadn't read this book—the more I thought about it afterwards, the worse it got.

...so

Briar Kasvi