Breaking Dawn

by Stephenie Meyer

I wrote this review after I read Breaking Dawn for the first time, but my thoughts are pretty much the same after my second reading, so I'm just going to paste it in!

So many people hated this book, but I have to admit - I adored it! Sure it may not be "realistic" but there's a reason the genre is called fantasy. I've read lots of books where people die. And yes, I can understand why an author would choose to do this - to add realism, to point out that victory is not without sacrifice, etc. But it was kinda nice to read a book - a series none the less - where you get to the end and all the characters you love are still kicking! After all, we all know real life can suck enough - I prefer it if the books I read for pleasure didn't have downers for an ending. Bella has to make a lot of difficult choices in the previous books and in Breaking Dawn we see the consequences for these choices. We were all wondering what would happen to Jacob, how Charlie would react to Bella's mysterious disappearance, what Bella would be like as a vampire, if Edward could avoid killing her on their honeymoon, if the Volturi would come for her, etc. I was hoping that Bella would not be like all the other newborn vampires. All along, Stephenie Meyer has made it pretty clear in her books that Bella was not like everyone else - from the very onset when Bella is the only person whose thoughts were hidden from Edward. I was hoping that she would end up not being a crazed newborn like they all assumed she would be, so I was thrilled that that was the way SM wrote it. Not only does Bella come into her new life with her wits about her, but she develops into this really strong character who not only takes charge, but totally saves the day! Yes, the name Renesmee struck me as totally weird when I first read it, but after a while I got used to it. The worst thing about Renesmee was that she was so hard to picture in my head! A baby that looks like a baby but doesn't act like one....it'll be interesting what they do with that if they ever try to make this book into a movie. And then there's Jacob and Charlie. After thinking that surely these two would be cut out of Bella's life, SM finds a way to bring them back in. I was shocked when I read the part where Jacob imprints on Renesmee - I remember running upstairs to where my friend Dani was (she was about 100 pages ahead of me) and yelling out something like "He imprints on the BABY?!?!" - but I wasn't really grossed out by this - SM had gone to some lengths to explain in Eclipse that it wasn't a romantic kind of love when the girl was so young, just a need to see that she is safe and happy. And I was doubly relieved that Charlie could still see Bella, and that he was finally able to know just enough so he could know his granddaughter. So yes, Breaking Dawn does wrap everything up at the end in a nice pretty bow, but I liked it that way. Bella gets everything she wanted, and everything she thought she couldn't have anymore. Lots of readers have said that this makes it too fake or cheapens it, but if we were Bella, wouldn't that be exactly how we'd want things to turn out? Real life isn't always so peachy - but books can be, so I'm thankful to Stephenie Meyer for giving us a better happy ending then I thought was possible. I enjoyed it.