twilight, new moon and eclipse: my reviews...

As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently finished reading the Stephanie Meyer books, twilight, new moon and eclipse. I was compelled to read them because so many of you recommended them. And when I say "so many of you", I mean a lot of you guys recommended them. I was somewhat taken aback that so many of my blogging buds had read and loved these books. So what could I do? I had to have them. Now, after I tell you what I thought of them, we'll see how many of my blogging buds still like me. lol Warning: If you haven't read the books yet but intend to, you might want to stop reading. Spoilers ahead!!

To begin with, I loved twilight. It was interesting, it was fun and it was even a little bit, well... hot (much to my surprise!), but without any sex, explicit or otherwise. The love story between Edward and Bella was just plain good. I'm not usually big on romance books. In fact, I usually steer pretty clear of them. I like murder and mayhem, thankyouverymuch. But twilight was an exception to that rule. I could hardly put it down after I started it. Luckily, I had new moon waiting in the wings for when I'd finished twilight. Or maybe not so luckily, because new moon didn't really do the same thing for me that twilight did. It was okay...not great, but certainly okay. I guess it was worth reading, but after the delight of twilight, new moon was actually kind of disappointing. I mean Edward took forever and a day to stop with the whole martyrdom thing and Bella very conveniently having a passport (as well as the journey that followed) seemed a bit contrived and it took entirely too long to have them back together again. But, even though I thought most of the book was wasted on Bella and her questionable mental state, it was still a good enough read to have been worth my time. Then came eclipse. Geez. I gotta tell you people, and at the risk of ticking everybody and their sister off, that book almost drove me over the edge. If Bella had fainted one more lousy time or if she'd felt the need to "curl up" in a lap and "be held", either by Edward or Alice or Jacob or anybody else because of the stress of being hunted (while at the same time being oh-so courageous and noble, blah, blah, blah) I thought I'd bite my own neck and drain my own blood just so I wouldn't have to read about her poor, quivering yet brave self for one more minute. But the absolute worst part of it was her "torn between two lovers" dilemma. Hello, Stephanie!!! You were writing a series of books about one of the greatest loves in the whole entire history of love! How can it be considered a "greatest love" if one of the parties of the greatest love duo is also in love with someone else at the same time??? Stupid, stupid, stupid. I mean come on. I had at least bought into believing that Edward and Bella were soulmates, even if I did want to smack Bella around for being a goober so much of the time, and then Meyer up and announces that Bella is in love with Jacob, too. What the hey? You know, if I'm going to be drawn into a romance series, I'd just as soon be rewarded with a romance worth sighing over. Sure, I was doing some sighing here, but it wasn't the "aaahhhh" kind of sighing, it was more the "oh no she did not go there" kind of sighing. Big. Honkin'. Difference.

Of course, having enjoyed about 1/2 of this series thus far (and even taking into account that I suffered through the other half), I'll still be checking out the final book (breaking dawn) when it's released on August 2nd. Why? Because hope springs eternal that Ms. Meyer will redeem herself and bring Bella back from the brink of utter stupidity and into the arms of that cold, marble skinned, hunk of frozen vampire love, Edward. (Hey, who says I'm not a romantic at heart, eh?)