New Moon

So I've finally gotten around to reading New Moon by Stephenie Meyer.  I'd seen the movie more than a few times, but hadn't really got the chance to read it - once I started, though, it only took me two nights to finish.  The same as Twilight, I know this book doesn't really need an introduction, but here is a refresher anyway.

We are, of course, still in the tiny town of Forks, Washington.  It's been about a year, and Bella and Edward are still together, which is probably a surprise to no one.  It's Bella's birthday, and she's all kinds of moody about it since now she is, for all intents and purposes, now one year older than Edward, and she is not thrilled at the fact that she's aging.  You might recall from the end of the first book that Bella wants Edward to turn her into a vampire so they can truly be together forever, but Edward isn't so keen on the idea, so she's still human (so far).  Anyway, against her wishes, Edward's "sister" Alice has put together a party for Bella at the Cullen house.  Bella, accident-prone as ever, can't get through the thing without a little blood being inadvertently shed, which as you can guess did not go well in a house full of vampires.  Jasper has the hardest time, if you remember, with the whole "vegetarian" lifestyle, and he reacts pretty quickly.  Edward reacts quickly to Jasper reacting quickly, and the party is basically ruined.

There are no hard feelings from Bella since hey, Jasper can't help it, but Edward convinces himself that he really is too much of a danger for her, and the Cullens pack up and leave town in kind of a hurry.  

Bella becomes deeply, deeply depressed and stays this way mostly for the rest of the book, and all of her friends except Jacob Black give up on her.  Bella becomes an adrenaline junkie, and then shit just starts hitting one fan after another.

Twilight

Much like Harry Potter, Twilight by Stephenie Meyer is likely not a book that really NEEDS a review at this point.  Everyone has either read it or heard about it, and even those who have not read it have an opinion on it.  The first time I read this, it was because a girl I worked with at the time told me I reminded her of Bella.  Naturally, I was curious to find out what she meant by that, but she also absolutely raved about the book, so I wanted to see if I would like it just as much.  As for me being like Bella - I guess we do have similarities, if you are looking at the awkward clumsiness, the fact that we are both somewhat more introverted and very pale.  I cannot, however, cook, and I do not have multiple boys fawning all over me at every turn. lol.  That was absolutely not my own high school experience, and even though I definitely look better now than I did back then, it is still not the case.

But I digress.

For those of you who haven't read (or...sigh...seen) Twilight - and for those of you who claim to, but actually haven't - here is a little summary.  Bella Swan is a teenage girl whose mother has remarried; her new stepfather is a minor league baseball player, so he is on the move a lot during the season.  Her mother stays in Phoenix with her, but Bella knows she'd like to be traveling with Phil; so she decides to move, to live with her father in Forks, a small town in Washington.  At first, she hates it - the constantly overcast sky, the seemingly constant precipitation, the way everything is too green.  And then she sees him.  Impossibly beautiful, irresistibly mysterious Edward Cullen.

He ends up being her lab partner in biology, and as with many stories of romance, he appears to really hate her at first, though he doesn't actually speak to her.  Then, after not showing up to school for a while, he returns and is unerringly charming.  Anyone with any experience in romantic fiction can see where this is going, even without reading further in the book - obviously, they are going to end up together.  The twist here is that Edward and his family are vampires.  They don't, however, swoop around at night, preying on the townspeople of Forks - as Edward explains it, they consider themselves "vegetarians" - they only feed on the blood of animals.

So, Bella starts spending pretty much all her time with Edward,  ignoring him when he tells her how dangerous it is to be with him.  Then, the first time she officially meets his family, a trio of nomadic vampires comes through the area; they recognize that she's a human, and after seeing the way Edward and his family move to defend her from attack, one of them makes it his singular ambition to kill her (he likes a challenge).

Obviously, since there are other books, you know she doesn't die.  But I won't give away details; for one, if you've only seen the movie, you should know that the events in the book unfold very differently from the film, and there are quite a lot of things that were left out.