New Moon (Maddie Mercier)

New Moon, by Stephenie Meyer, Little, Brown and Company, 545 pp
I decided to read this book because it is the sequel to Twilight which I read over the summer. I really loved the first book, so I wanted to read the second one.
New Moon is the second book in the Twilight series. This book started off with a bang at Bella’s birthday party where she was opening gifts and got a paper cut. For any other family, this wouldn’t be a big deal at all, but it’s the Cullen family so as soon as that first drop of blood fell, it went downhill. The next day, Edward toward Bella that he and his family were leaving forever. Bella went into a state depression; she wasn’t living her life at all. She was just going through the motions, until Jacob came along. As we know, Edward is a vampire and as the book continues, we find out that Jacob is a werewolf. As the book continues, Jacob and Bella become very close, but Bella still wants Edward. Bella will do anything to see Edward again, so she comes close to death in hopes of him coming and saving her, but Jacob saves her instead. Edward thinks that Bella has died, so he goes to the Volturi to be killed and be with Bella. Alice finds out that Bella is in fact alive, so the two pf them travel to Italy in hopes of keeping Edward from being killed and in the end, Bella and Edward are together, alive.
The audience for this book has a wide range because the first book was such a phenomenon. There are fifth graders that read it and parents that read it too.
The author, Stephenie Meyer, writes with detail when she needs to and uses simpler terms when she needs to. She incorporates a good balance of technical terms and simple ones. The book is more focused on the plot than anything else. “It was Jacob himself. Jacob was a perpetually happy person, and he carried that happiness with him like an aura, sharing it with whoever was near him. Like an earthbound sun, whenever someone was within his gravitational pull, Jacob warmed them” (145).
“Alice, I assumed, had covered every flat surface with pink candles and dozens of crystal bowls filled with hundreds of roses. There was a table with a white cloth draped over it next to Edward’s grand piano, holding a pink birthday cake, more roses, a stack of glass plates, and a small pile of silver-wrapped presents” (25).
If somebody planned me a birthday party, it would probably be something along the lines of what Alice did for Bella. Everything I own is pink, or flowered, so when I read this passage I laughed because it reminded me of myself.
“A week was long. By Wednesday, I was sure I wasn’t going to live till Saturday” (227).
This is a quote that almost every person can relate you, including myself. Sometime the week seems so long that you won’t make it, but thankfully Friday always comes.
“I probably should have watched out the windows as first the city of Florence and then the Tuscan landscape flashed past with blurring speed. This was my first trip anywhere…” (440).
In this part of the book, Bella has traveled to Italy to save Edward, so as I was reading I thought back to my trip to Italy in April. It brought back a lot of memories and it was cool to read about places that I had already seen.
The primary theme of New Moon is that true love never fails. That is the theme because after Edward left, Jacob and Bella were ‘together’ and they had their fun, but in the end, Edward and Bella were together. Edward and Bella have an extremely loving relationship, and Jacob was never really going to be able to separate them. Another reason why that is the theme is because Bella risked her life just to see Edwards face like the motorcycle incident and when she jumped off of the cliff.
I would give this book an A- because I loved it. The plot, the characters, and the excitement kept me going until the very end. The author has a very strong way of keeping the reader guessing up until the final twist. I can’t wait to read the next book!