Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

By tradition, I have to say SPOILERS ALERT here. By opinion, I have to say the book is spoiled already. I don't think I've ever seen a worse case of missed opportunity than Breaking Dawn. While I practically ate up the previous three novels - especially the first one - I had to force myself to even finish this last installment. Twilight was unquestionably the best of the series, and while the following two novels were interesting, I don't think I'm the only one who could see a steady decline in storytelling, leading up to this extremely disappointing conclusion to the series. The first three novels set up a scenario with, I think, four primary things we, the readers, were looking forward to seeing get satisfactorily concluded. 1. BELLA AND EDWARD FINALLY PHYSICALLY CONSUMMATING THEIR RELATIONSHIP. Wow, were we ever strung along through 3 thick books of desire and denial, passion and restraint with these two characters. Didn't we look forward to some level of intimacy being introduced in this finale? But what do we get? A barely-insinuated get-together with a rather rapid fade to black, then it's the next morning for them. I had to go back a few pages, thinking, "Wait... What? Did they do it or not?" OK, I understand the delicate situation here for a writer, seeing as her audience is primarily a younger generation. But that's no excuse. If you compare this situation to that of the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and I hate to, as it insults that show), which was also begun aimed at a young, teenage audience, the writers realized that as that show grew and matured over time, so did its audience, and thus, the show gradually became more adult in its themes. Stephenie Meyer had the perfect opportunity here of giving young girls some hint of what they should expect from newly discovered intimacy, and how they should be treated in such a situation. She could have handled it subtly - at least have a passionate kissing scene leading into the fade to black. Something MORE than the bland, empty scene we got. But apparently she thought that would be too mature for her audience. Yet having a scene where Edward bites through the fetal sack of Bella's bone-crushing parasite baby, with blood splattered all over the place was better? 2. EDWARD MAKING BELLA A VAMPIRE. Again, we were strung along. Bella pleaded for this through three novels. She insisted it be Edward who make her one of them, thus setting up the idea that, despite the fact becoming a vampire would be very painful for her, all of that would be preceded by some intense and passionate moment where he actually bites her. Isn't this the whole point of a romantic vampire novel? The girl actually and finally gets bitten?! I think we were also curious as to how that would play out. Would he be able to control himself and not kill her when he did this? Instead, what did we get? Edward injecting her with a venom-filled hypodermic, after a particularly horrid scene of childbirth. 3. SEEING WHAT BELLA WOULD BE LIKE AS A VAMPIRE. We were led up to this point, with the warnings she might be a monster. I don't know about you, but I was looking forward to seeing sweet, clumsy, awkward Bella becoming a complete nut for a while. I thought it also plausible - and even a fascinating idea - that she might become the major threat in the last novel. The "villain". How cool might that have been? The Volturi would come to try and stop her, but with her powers of resistance, even they would have a difficult time bringing her under control... Instead, Bella was tame, unaffected. In fact, she became BORING. Or maybe just MORE so. 4. DECISIONS, DECISIONS. WOULD BELLA CHOOSE EDWARD OR JACOB? There was really no question she'd choose Edward, but what would happen to Jacob? How would that be resolved? Would he give himself over to the wild completely, or die to resolve this? The answer we got: Have him imprint on Bella's BABY, for crying out loud! Even though we'd previously been given the distinct impression he'd already imprinted on Bella, and there was no way around that. CONCLUSION: I have a hard time imagining how true fans of this series were happy with this last novel. Even the characters didn't seem like themselves, to the sad point where I felt like the chemistry between Bella and Edward was completely dead. As I was reading this book, I sometimes wondered if some other (bad) author had written it, because it was just so incredibly inconsistent with the character development, wit, and dialog style of the previous books. (It's really suspicious to me how many people have said it's like SMeyer didn't even write it, especially considering another novel by her was released about the same time. Have we been duped?) It makes me sick to think of all the GOOD writers out there being rejected repeatedly by publishing companies, while this tripe goes through and SMeyer gets rich off of it. There is no justice. MY RECOMMENDATION: Quit with the first novel, Twilight. Pretend that last scene in it is Edward biting her and just drop it. Addendum: My sympathies go out to the screenwriters who had to deal with this garbage and turn it into a script.