New Moon By Stephenie Meyer || Book Review

Hey Guys! It’s Max here and before you ask where in the world had I been or you are just entirely curious about whether or not I had been kidnapped. Well, let me just explain them now so we can get the odd announcement out and carry on with our review!

Odd Announcement:

I am not kidnapped. I had my trials in school recently and I had placed all of my focus on that and therefore, I was not able to have any updates on my blog even though I really want to. Please forgive me, I really did not mean to disappear for a month and make all of you frantic! 

However, I am currently having a 2 weeks long holiday so I will definitely be using this precious time to have some constructive reviews and articles up on this blog. Once again, I am so sorry for the late announcement.

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With that aside, let us get into the mini summary of the second novel- New Moon in the Twilight series. 

New Moon is a Paranormal, Romance-heavy novel, following Bella Swan, now seventeen, as she goes through major heartbreak from her recent break up with Edward Cullen who she had found out to be a vampire.

Without further ado, let us get into the review!

Disclaimers:

• All thoughts and opinions are on my own and…
• The review for this book contains some spoilers. So, read it at your own risk!

“What a marshmallow. You should hold out for someone with a stronger stomach. Someone who laughs at the gore that makes weaker men vomit.”- New Moon, Stephenie Meyer.

Synopsis:

I knew we were both in mortal danger. Still, in that instant, I felt well. Whole. I could feel my heart racing in my chest, the blood pulsing hot and fast through my veins again. My lungs filled deep with the sweet scent that came off his skin. It was like there had never been any hole in my chest. I was perfect – not healed, but as if there had never been a wound in the first place. 

For Bella Swan, there is one thing more important than life itself: Edward Cullen. But being in love with a vampire is even more dangerous than Bella could ever have imagined. Edward has already rescued Bella from the clutches of one evil vampire, but now, as their daring relationship threatens all that is near and dear to them, they realize their troubles may be just beginning…

My thoughts: The Beginning

“Love is irrational, I reminded myself. The more you loved someone, the less sense anything made.”- New Moon, Stephenie Meyer.

“Can you hear that…? It’s ranting time! Read it at your own peril!”

Let us start off with this review by commenting on the pacing of the novel. I found the pacing for this novel to be rather slow because of how enormously thick this book was. In case you are wondering, this book is 563 pages long and it was quite boring due to the fact that almost nothing had happened in this book except for the last 80 pages. It was as if the author had made a trend out of this series- action scenes in the very last-minute and I am here to tell you that I totally hated this trend because the author had ordered the readers to read through the life of Bella’s awful actions until the very last scene where the plot started accelerating forward and abruptly stopped with no signs of direction for what the next book will set up to be and I am just going to put this here: Through all the action sequences, it still proved Bella to be a useless liability to the Cullens family. Sorry, I had to do it.

Moving on, we have the plot and the plot holes to talk about in this review. The plot which was almost non-existent until yet again the last 80 pages of this novel, was extremely substandard. The beginning of the novel hooked me in which I originally thought was a good sign but the thoughts had evaporated as the endless mopping of Bella’s face continued on for what seemed like forever until the book ended in a happy tone because Edward came back for her and all of that crap. Furthermore, I was probably just disappointed with Bella because of how her character had quickly become moronic in this novel and I know this is a romance-heavy novel but that is totally an excuse for the lack of actions. Thus, my dislike for the plot is totally understandable.

In addition, the number of plot holes in this novel was huge. There were too many things that were left unexplained in this novel that it made my head throbbed and gave me a migraine. Plot holes such as the abilities, how does one gain an extra ability in this world and why does the Volturi want Edward and Alice to be his sidekick? Did he not have enough humans and vampires for him to be as powerful as he seemed to be? Well, those are just some questions that I have for now but I know there will be more if I continue to read the other novels in this series.

Furthermore, we have the world-building and the atmosphere that I would like to talk about in this review. Unlike my previous review for a Twilight novel, this book’s world-building really lack-lustre. Items and places were not described as perspicuously as before. Some of them were skimmed through and those things somehow became a major part of the novel without being properly described. Thus, the world-building was bad and I hope there will have some improvement in the next novel.

In addition, we are now going to talk about the atmosphere of the novel. The atmosphere for this book was not as suspenseful and romantic as prior to its ancestor and the elements did not combine well in this novel. Again, the suspense only starts at the end of the novel which only lasted for an hour- 80 pages long. Thus, I did not enjoy the atmosphere for this novel.

Finally, we have the action sequences in this novel that I would like to discuss. The actions scene were the only ones that I truly enjoyed in this novel. They were suspenseful, scary and stressful. Why is it stressful? You may ask but the scene where Bella was almost being beaten by the vampire was the most stressful period of the entire book. Therefore, I enjoyed the action sequences and how it made my emotions run like a baby asking for ice-cream while whining.

Now, let us get into the writing section of this review!

Writing: Middle section of this review

“love gave someone the power to break you. 
I’d been broken beyond repair.”- New Moon, Stephenie Meyer.

As usual, this book does not have any quality writing but somehow it irked me even more than the previous book. Well, allow me to have a long and detail explanation:

The author repeated information that readers already knew in the first book. Further on to state my point, she added an information that we do not know in the first few pages and repeated it again in the next few pages and again in the next hundred pages. I kind of pissed me off because how many times do you need to repeat the same thing over and over again so that we would understand!?

Moreover, Bella’s character which I will talk more about later on in the Characters’ review section, was so freaking UGH! Sorry, I need to control my emotions. Let’s rephrase the sentence: Bella’s character was destroyed because she had the desire to kill herself merely because of her boyfriend who broke up with her and all she can think about was him- for 6 freaking months. Just, WHY?

In addition, this book was yet again filled with dialogues and though it was easy to read and also, easy to skim through, it was also pretty annoying. There were more telling than showing and the world surrounding Bella just was not building up well enough for the readers to understand the system and the way it was supposed to be.

Finally, this book should not be as long as it should be because of the points that I had added above and this: Almost 90% of the book was covered with Bella’s self-indulgence for death due to the breakup and it was just so dull. I am sorry to say that but it was dull.

So, let us now get into the characters’ section!

Characters: 4/5 section of this review

“Speaking of which, would you like to explain to me how you’re alive”- New Moon, Stephenie Meyer.

Bella: Hm, who is she? Just kidding. I really did not like her in this novel. I know that heartbreak and disappointments are hard to go through but Bella had taken everything to the next level. Her mind had gone haywire without Edward and all she can think about was what to do next to hurt herself- hard and guess who she had brought in to join her little conquest? Jacob. She used him as a source of happiness and although she really needed it, it was a bad move. After Edward came back for her, she literally abandoned him and stalked off with Edward who dumped her in the first place… So, great character development, I guess… (take note of the sarcasm).  

Jacob: What an arse. I knew Bella was using him as a source of happiness but Jacob was also being a really bad friend to Bella. He exacerbated Bella’s emotions even more than what Edward had done to her and it led her to a point where she really felt the drive to plunge into the ocean and drown. In addition, for a book that centred on Bella and Jacob, Jacob managed to screw the entire book up with his attitude which was the ‘bad-boy demeanour,’ pretty well. So, the character development for this character would be a negative 1000. 

Edward: I hated him in this novel. If it was not for his stubbornness and persistence, this novel and plot would not have existed except for the action scenes which I know Stephenie would be able to amplify them, and Bella’s character would not have been like ‘that’… By the way, he had zero character growth in this book. So, have a damn nice day, Edward.

Alice: She is now my favourite character in this series. For a book so wearisome, this character somehow stood up and although she was not in a lot of scenes in this novel which she should because Bella died doing boring scenes and the readers dwindled reading them, she gave me a vibe of her charisma and I absolutely loved it! She was not annoying and she was strong and capable of whatever she had on her hands. Those characteristics are natures which Bella will never be allowed to get because of her annoyance.

Overall: The Ending

Whatever charm that had worked for the first book in this series- Twilight, was now gone when my eyes settled on this book and its words. So, without any pity scores, because there would be none for this novel, I will give this novel a 15%. 

I am sorry but this book is really, really bad.

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This is the end of my spoiler-free review for New Moon By Stephenie Meyer! I hope you all enjoyed it and follow me with your email/Wordpress account to get notifications when I post a new article! Bye!