Breaking Dawn: Worth The Wait

Breaking Dawn: Worth The Wait The release of Breaking Dawn, by Stephenie Meyer, has had Twilight fans all over the world in an anxious frenzy, and now that the book is out, many are wondering—is the saga-ending volume even worth reading? In my opinion, it definitely is.

As a devout Twilight fan, one who’s been devoted to the series since a friend recommended the books to me two years ago, I have to admit: the idea of the series ending terrified me. While everyone else was worried about whom Bella would choose—Edward or Jacob—I was simply hoping that all the characters survived the confrontation with the Volturi that was so imminent. I went to a release party at my local Barnes & Noble with almost no expectations for the book—I didn’t want to be disappointed. But five hours of late night/early morning reading later, I was crying as I absorbed the last wonderful sentences of the series that I never wanted to come to an end.

Breaking Dawn, like many other books that signal the end of an epic story, has already received a lot of negative feedback. However, I’m not going to contribute to that. I loved this book. It’s taken the place of Eclipse as my favorite in the series, and despite the book’s drastic differences from its’ companions, I feel that people may have judged it too harshly. With more mature themes such as sex and pregnancy, some are upset that the book deviated from its young adult genre. Breaking Dawn has a much darker, twisted feel to it than the other books, which is one of the reasons why I liked it so much. This book deals with the reality of Bella’s choice. No longer is the idea of dating a vampire who thirsts for your blood glamorized—on the morning after her honeymoon, Bella wakes up alive, but badly bruised. After I was able to stop giggling, (Sex with Edward gives a whole new meaning to the word “rough”, doesn’t it?) I began to think that maybe this wasn’t going to be the several-hundred-pages of fluffy happiness so many people were hoping for. My suspicious were confirmed when it was revealed that Bella was pregnant, something I’m sure everyone believed to be impossible. Intrigued, I read on.

I think that having Book Two told from Jacob point-of-view was an excellent idea. Meyer teased us with a small glimpse into his mind at the end of Eclipse, and since Jacob has been one of my favorite characters since New Moon, it was nice to get inside his head once again and to see that he wasn’t just the annoying werewolf guy he so often appeared to be. His depth was further shown when he separated from his pack to protect the Cullens, and also when he gave Edward permission to change Bella into a vampire should anything go wrong with the delivery of her baby, even though Jacob had been against Bella’s becoming an immortal since the start. From Jacob’s perspective, we get to see the progression of the bizarrely brief and draining pregnancy that results in the birth of a new character: Renesmee. (That alone was my only real problem with the book. Renesmee? What kind of a name is that? Couldn’t they have called her by her middle, name, Carlie?) Almost immediately after Renesmee is born, Bella’s life starts spiraling towards death, and everyone works furiously to save her. The birth scene and the events following it were some of my favorite parts of the book, despite the graphic nature that might be less appealing to younger readers.

The plot thickens once Bella awakens after her vampiric transformation. Surprisingly, she’s able to resist the temptation of human blood much more easily than a newborn vampire should have been able to do, which to me showed the aversion to blood she had as a human carrying over to her new life. She’s even able to be around her daughter, who is half-human, half-vampire, and her father Charlie, when everyone expected her to be crazy with thirst for years. Things are hunky-dory for a while—the Cullens are thrilled with the new addition to their family, though they’re quite puzzled by her disturbing advancements, and Jacob has imprinted on Renesmee, eliminating the conflict between him and Edward. There are an abundance of fun, light-hearted moments between all of the characters that you almost forget about the Volturi. But, of course, there was no way such an important aspect could be avoided.

I thought that the final confrontation with the Volturi was a bit drawn-out; I can remember the exact point where I wished the story would just move on already, but apart from that, everything about the last few pages of the book flowed perfectly together into an ending so cute it’s almost vomit-inducing. Though I disliked some things about it, I enjoyed Breaking Dawn in general, and I felt it provided an adequate and satisfactory ending to a much-loved series.

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