New Moon - The Novel

I just finished reading Stephenie Mayer's New Moon, the author of Twilight. The story revolves around Bella Swan, Edward Cullen, and Jacob Black. It's sort of a love triangle between the three of them, and in this novel, Edward decides to leave Bella for her to enjoy a normal human life.

Since Bella is literally crazily, head over heels in love with Edward (and who wouldn't be?!), her life is literally left a mess when Edward decides to leave her. As her dad Charlie aptly put it, "It was like night of the living dead." Bella would have nightmares every night and wake up screaming, and also threw herself into doing crazy things just so she could hear Edward's voice in her head. So you could pretty much say she was having delusions and hearing voices.

Her childhood friend Jacob Black who's always been in love with her, helps her climb out of the hole she's crawled into, and Bella finds herself falling in love with Jacob. But she has this nagging feeling that she's just settling for the person who's available, and she doesn't want Jacob to love her because she sees herself as a wreck.

Bella is visited by Laurent, a vampire from Twilight who wants to kill her, and she is saved by Jacob and his pack who turns out to be werewolves. Alice, Edward's sister who can see the future, suddenly drops for a visit and puts Bella's life into a spin again. Since she saw Bella jump off a cliff when in reality she was just cliff diving, Edward decides to go to the Volturi, a really old clan of vampires, and requests to end his existence. In a mad dash, Bella and Alice save Edward from the Volturi and leave Jacob behind. The Volturi agreed to free them but under one condition. Since Bella already knew too much about their existence, she would need to be turned into a vampire.

The lovers are reunited, with Jacob busting Bella's motorcycle to her dad, under the hopes of getting Bella grounded so that she wouldn't have time to spend with Edward. Jacob didn't know that Bella was already grounded, which was also the reason why she couldn't visit Jacob anymore. I liked the part when Edward said his thanks to Jacob for saving Bella several times when he wasn't around, and the entire Cullen family are back and Edward swears to never again leave Bella.

Of course, Bella and the entire Cullen family are aware of what the future holds her. They can't escape the Volturi who would eventually come looking for them and see if Bella was already turned, Victoria was still hunting Bella, and Jacob is still hoping that Bella would love him back. So there, I guess that's enough spoilers already.

What I did not like about this book is how Bella decides in a snap to leave Jacob behind and choose Edward again. All of the feelings she's held for Jacob are forgotten in a flash and she goes back to her dreams of being part of the Cullen family and to hell with everything else. I just can't believe how easy it was for her to welcome Edward back into her arms after everything she put him through. Oh well, I guess love really does make people do crazy things. I'm looking forward to reading the 3rd book in the Twilight series and we'll see what happens then.