One left. After this there is only one left in this series and I'll be free from Twilight. Why am I putting myself through this again? Ah well, let's have a look. Trigger warning for mentions of pedophila and racism, with this being a Twilight book and all. Spoilers ahead.
Now that she's and Edward are together again, Bella is facing new and old troubles. She struggles with liking both Edward and Jacob, all the while the werewolves and vampires have a very strained relationship that seems like it could burst any second. Also, Victoria is still hunting down Bella.
This was just another huge dud. And I mean huge. Look, even if the yikes elements weren't present in these books, the Twilight books by and large can be described in one word: ungodly boring. There is practically no plot for 90% of the time unless we really need some conflict, and otherwise it's just Bella kind of hanging out with werewolves and vampires. But the thing is, I as a reader do not care about her character, or really any of the others, so the characters don't save the story, either.
If there was no plot but at least the characters were amazing and enjoyable, maybe there would've been some better elements in this series, but there just...aren't any. Even the characters I enjoy more than others are only good by comparison. I know I like characters like Alice for example, but she still would never even get close to making it to any of my "favorite fictional characters" lists.
Heck, even Jacob, whom I quite liked in the second book, becomes downright insufferable in this book. He excuses pedophilia and sexually assaults Bella in hopes of getting her to like him back. Dude, if anything, that'll make things worse, what the hell were you thinking?
As for the whole pedophilia aspect, yep, it's really there unfortunately. I know books one and two also had it, with 100+-years old Edward hitting on 17-years old Bella in book one, but it was at least a tiny bit more subdued due to Bella being close to 18 (still doesn't make the age gap okay, duh). But in this book there is literally just a character who falls in love with a two-year-old. And it's presented as a normal thing for their culture.
Just the whole concept of imprinting feels yucky to me. Heck, even if there isn't an ungodly adult-child imprinting involved it can go horribly, as portrayed with Sam and Emily. But there are literally young-adults hitting on two-year-olds here. And even if they're not adults yet, they will be long before the kid is one. And I don't buy this whole "the imprinter will be the imprintees best friend until they're old enough" business. It's love, plain and simple, and it's creepy as fuck. I don't know how Meyer thought in any way this was okay. Also, yes, I know what is coming in the next book regarding Jacob and another character, but we'll be saving that for then.
Again, the Quileute characters are not portrayed very graciously in this book. Most of them (particularly the werewolves) are seen as testosterone-filled grumps who can massively lose their shit at any moment and transform and attack someone. And the whole "taking real Quileute mythology/folklore and just making up shit about their culture" is taken to an extreme in this book.
Before, it was also present, but at least it was somewhat subtle aside from that story of the Cold Ones Jacob mentioned. But here we literally have an entire campfire chapter where the Native characters narrate a bunch of made-up folklore regarding the werewolves and vampires to Bella. There's actually a really good website that points out the bad representation and inconsistencies regarding the portrayal of the Quileute in Twilight, I'll link it here if you want to check it out. I definitely recommend giving it a read.
But like I said before, even discounting the bad stuff regarding the racism and imprintingphilia, the rest simply does not carry the book. The characters are mostly boring or downright unlikable, I could care less about the love triangle considering both Bella's options are shit, and there is practically no plot throughout all of this.
Rating: 0.5/5
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