New Moon - Stephenie Meyer

== New Moon: Stephenie Meyer ==

"Blood pulsed from my arm as I looked into the eyes of six suddenly ravenous vampires!


== Introduction ==
I read Twilight after hearing much acclaimed reviews about it by friends and review sites. I wasn’t expecting much from it, as Sci-Fi isn’t my thing, but when I started reading the book, I got really into it and couldn’t put it down, so I asked my husband to buy ...
...give me the second book, New Moon early so I could read it and then watch the film while it was still in the cinema.

I finished the book last week and watched the film last night which I wrote a review on earlier.

== About the author ==
Stephenie Meyer is a “new writer”, Twilight was her first book, and since then she has written the 3 sequels (New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn) as well as another book called ... more

New Moon: Stephenie Meyer

"Blood pulsed from my arm as I looked into the eyes of six suddenly ravenous vampires!

Introduction

I read Twilight after hearing much acclaimed reviews about it by friends and review sites. I wasn’t expecting much from it, as Sci-Fi isn’t my thing, but when I started reading the book, I got really into it and couldn’t put it down, so I asked my husband to buy me the other books for Christmas, and begged him to give me the second book, New Moon early so I could read it and then watch the film while it was still in the cinema.

I finished the book last week and watched the film last night which I wrote a review on earlier.

About the author

Stephenie Meyer is a “new writer”, Twilight was her first book, and since then she has written the 3 sequels (New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn) as well as another book called The Host which is unconnected to the Twilight Saga.

The Twilight saga was written by Meyer when she dreamed the story, the dreams kept on coming to her, and she decided to write them all up, of course adding and changing bits as she went along to make them more readable!

Plot

If you had read Twilight, you will know the story from that book, which you really do need to read before reading New Moon as it sets up the story of Edward and Bella. Twilight is about a 17 year old girl Isabella (Bella) Swan, who moved to Forks, a tiny town in Washington, USA, to live with her father, Charlie, when her mother re-marries. Her life takes a huge change when she meets Edward Cullen and his strange, but beautiful family. She soon discovers the Cullen’s secret…they’re vampires. Edward is crazy about Bella and she is madly in love with him and is desperate for him to change her into a vampire so they can spend forever together, her worst fear is to grow old, while he stays 17 forever, but he refuses to ruin her life by taking away her future. The Twilight saga follows the trials and tribulations that follow Bella around since meeting the Cullen’s and the danger she gets into constantly, throw in a pack of Werewolves and a vampire with a vengeance and you have New Moon!

When Edward leaves Bella, taking every trace of his existence with him, Bella is distraught, she did nothing to deserve this, she loves Edward so much, how could he just leave like that. For 3 months Bella is in a trance, she doesn’t eat, she is like an empty shell of who she was before, losing all of her friends and wallowing in her own sorrow.

She is finally pulled out of her slump by her friend Jacob Black, a family friend who is mad over Bella, but whose love isn’t reciprocated by Bella, well not in that way anyway. He pulls her out of her depression and makes the hole in heart feel whole again, if only for a couple of hours a day. Bella has realised that when she gets into danger, she sees Edward in her head telling her not to do something, to keep safe, and so turns to danger so she can see her love.
When Jacob starts acting weird and avoiding her, Bella worries he has fallen in with the bad gang who he was telling Bella about not so long ago, who changed his friends personalities and ruined them. He won’t speak to her or see her, and Bella finds herself falling back into depression. But when she finds out Victoria, a vampire who is dead set on killing Bella, is back in Forks and is looking for her, she is terrified, until she finds out Jacobs real reason for his change…

Will Edward and the Cullen’s ever come back to Forks and mend Bella’s broken heart?

Readability and intended readers

The book is intended for young adults, ages between 16 and 30 I would say, possibly younger depending on the types of books you enjoy reading. The books are, I suppose the Harry Potter for the older generation and more for girls than Harry Potter is. New Moon is very well written and easy to read, with chapters which are a good 24-30 pages long, meaning they aren’t too long that you can’t read a chapter a night, and not so short that the book has 50 chapters making the story seem rushed.

The book doesn’t require too much thinking about the story which is great when reading the book at bedtime. You do really have had to read the first book before reading New Moon to understand the story, to understand how Bella and Edward ended up in the situation they are in, and how their love has grown.

Price and availability

Buying the book from Amazon.co.uk is probably the cheapest option as it costs just £3.50 including P&P. But the book is available from all good bookstores, the RRP is £6.99 but you are unlikely to have to pay this in most shops!

Overall

The plot is great even with the climax coming quite late on in the book, sadly I knew what the twist was when I first started reading the book, as the trailer for the film actually ruined that for me, so all the way through the book I was waiting for it to happen and when the lead up to it happening was been read, I didn’t have that excitement about not knowing what was going to happen and why it was happening. I was sad about this as the lead up was great and for someone who didn’t know what was going to happen would have been very intriguing and would have made you want to keep on reading and reading until you found out what was going to happen.

The plot does carry on from Twilight, so it isn’t the type of sequel which you can read on it’s own, you do really need a base point to start at which Twilight gives you, of course it is a simple story to understand: Edward is a vampire who doesn’t drink human blood but hunts vampires, Bella is his human girlfriend whose blood calls to him to drink- but he resists for two reasons; 1) he loves Bella and couldn’t live in a world where she didn’t exist and 2) he wouldn’t want to risk his families safety in Forks. Jacob Black is a family friend who Bella has known since they were children, they’re friends but the Cullen’s and the Black’s don’t get on, and neither like the fact that Bella hangs around with the other.

This base point will get you through the second book, New Moon, but to get a real feel for it, you really do have to read Twilight which is a beautifully written book which gives you such an amazing picture of the characters in the story. And I definitely recommend you reading Twilight first, I can guarantee that you will love it, and if you don’t love it, then you more than likely won’t love New Moon either!
The Twilight saga is amazing, and perfect books for older teenagers and young adults. Don’t get into the problem I did by thinking that the books are Sci Fi, as although they are Science Fiction in a way (what with the Vampires and Werewolves), it is very much like Time Traveller’s Wife in that it is put into the real world into real life, and not made into a “new world”, or set in the “future”, but is happening to real people, which makes the story actually believable, and tricks you into thinking this could actually be real, whereas my view of Sci Fi is putting lots of characters like “aliens”, “monsters”, etc into a different world, be it out of space, the future, or a different planet. I would definitely put this under the romance genre, more than anything else and is a brilliant book.

If you enjoyed reading Twilight, The Time Traveller’s Wife, or enjoyed any of the Twilight Saga films which have been out up to now, then you will enjoy this book, it is 496 pages long, so is just long enough to be a great read, but short enough not to be a door stop for one! But also to take 3 years to read if you are a slow reader.

I would say, that I enjoyed Twilight better, maybe because Edward is in the first book more than he is in New Moon!!!!! But New Moon is a fabulous book which leaves a bit of a cliff hanger at the end which really makes you want to read the next book, Eclipse. Which sadly I will have to wait until Christmas for!
 

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