My review of Breaking Dawn (I posted it on goodreads.com)
*WARNING* It does contain major SPOILERS!!
Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyerrating: 3 of 5 stars
*Warning* SPOILERS AHEAD
I love happy endings, but sometimes you have to sacrifice a little happy for the good of the story. This book lacked depth, and I found it really disappointing. There was a serious lack of the deep emotion that I found drawn to in her previous novels. This seemed more like a 600 page epilogue to the other novels than a novel itself.
To fully understand my disappointment, you might need to hear my expectations. From an e-mail I wrote before the release of Breaking Dawn:
Thoughts on Breaking Dawn:
I'm so excited for a fourth novel! I predict that Bella will stall a little bit before changing, but I think she will eventually get married and have Edward be the one to do the biting. I have no idea how the consummating will go. I'm not sure if Stephenie's going to go into too much detail and I'm not sure why Bella thinks it's going to be such a pleasant experience when she's a human. Having relations with hard cold marble ... maybe it could be pleasant, but I don't think I'd be excited about trying it.
Stephenie says she's given it a lot of thought, so I'll just let her sort out the details. I'm excited to see if Bella's a crazy newborn, and how she deals with it. I hope Stephenie details a lot of her changing. I think it could be really interesting. I keep thinking that some crazy twist is going to happen. I first thought she was going to get pregnant during her wedding night and have a 1/2 vampire baby. Stephenie shot that idea down on one of the blogs I was reading. I guess vampires can't get anyone pregnant. And if Bella were pregnant when she was turned into a vampire, she would remain that way forever. Since most of the story lines have been fairly straight forward, I doubt anything too unexpected is going to happen. I'm guessing that Bella's power to control her mind is going to be her major superpower, but I'm guessing that attracting danger isn't going to stop once she's on the other side.
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I really wish attracting danger would have followed her on as a vampire. The dangers could have been more extreme to match her new powers. That would have made the pages and pages of waiting for something to happen a lot more interesting.
I kept waiting for some conflict. First I waited for something to happen to delay the wedding or make it harder. Didn't happen. I kept waiting for something to happen to delay the honeymoon or the sex. Didn't really happen. Then I waited for some conflict to happen with the pregnancy. It happened, but we switched perspectives instead of using that opportunity to explore Bella's internal struggles with her love for something that was killing her. Then I waited for some conflict with Bella being a vampire. None really. Then I waited for some interesting character information on the new vampires. Boring. Then I waited through hundreds of pages to get to the end battle. The end battle that ended up being pages and pages of talking.
And human/vampire sex good? really? how? I feel like Stephanie turned traitor on me. How exactly did the seed get from Edward to Bella? That was never explained to my satisfaction. I thought she had it all thought out. I think I was wrong.
I also had a problem with the Bella having to drink blood during her pregnancy. It's not like the embilical cord is a straw between baby and mom's stomach. The baby should have been getting the nutrients it needed from the IV to survive, so why was it rejecting nutrients passed on from Bella when it wasn't even tasting them? Bella as a human drinking blood was creepy, and in my opinion totally unnecessary.
Their baby was really creepy. Couldn't she show a little human emotion? She was not vulnerable and seemed devoid of any emotion. As I was reading, I kept picturing her as the Chucky doll. Despite the fact that all the vampires were falling in love with her, I didn't find her to be that enduring.
Bella's love for Edward was as strong as a mother's love for a child in the earlier novels. In Breaking Dawn her love seemed more like lust than anything else, and her maternal love towards Chucky seemed a little flaky. Sometimes she was obsessed and then other times she just ignored the baby.
I thought the plot of Twilight was weak, but I enjoyed reading about the relationship between Bella and Edward enough to forgive it. I loved the emotional turmoil in New Moon. Jacob and Edward both bugged me in Eclipse, but I had high hopes for Breaking Dawn. Instead I was left with neither plot nore interesting characters. My disappointment is overwhelming.
I still like Stephenie's writing, but I feel like she dropped the ball on this one. I get the sense that she got too attached to her characters and wanted everything to end perfectly for them. I wanted that too, but not really. Really I wanted to feel some conflict, some pain, and some character growth.
View all my reviews.
This entry was posted
on Friday, August 8, 2008 at 4:45 PM.
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Yeah Ben pretty much hates it to. Like I said on my review I was SOOOO grateful that the book left me NOT wanting more that I forgive it for a lot. I feel like the series has ended and I'm okay with that. While I was reading I did recall your e-mail from awhile back and told Ben "Kristen predicted almost all of this." Very impressive! Maybe you should write something! :)
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