I read so many people's horrible reviews of this book and I was bracing myself to be severely disappointed and... (drum roll please) I was. No surprise there. The story actually had potential but Meyer deftly botched it all up. About 100 pages in, I told the hubby exactly what was going to happen and I was spot on! Exactly, dead right! Sheesh! I HATE it when that happens. Meyer has no sense of the unexpected, no sense of humanizing her characters, and no idea how to get you mad at a book - in a good way. Everything ended up so neatly tied up at the end -- I mean come on, at least someone important could have died or had a somewhat unhappy ending!! It's like she said, "Oh, I mentioned this minor character earlier, I have to make a perfect ending for him too." I couldn't stand all the happy "I-might-be-dying-so-let's-declare-our-undying-love" vignettes. Blech. This book left me feeling upset. I am glad I read it so I can stop wondering how it all turned out, but I'll never go back to it. EVER. ( )

I was debating 3 or 4 stars for the book. I settled on three because although it was a rather delicious escapist romp the plot was rather ridiculous at times and some parts dragged whilst others weren't very well explained.

Also the addition of so many new characters made it a confusing read at times. What made this even worse was that she, through one of her characters, acknowledges that she has introduced to many characters by putting in an explanatory chart.

However if you want a good hammock/beach read this is certainly something I would recommend. ( )

** spoiler alert ** I liked that Bella finally became a vampire, but the rest of it seemed like Stephenie was trying to tie up all of her loose ends as quickly as she could. I also had a hard time getting throught the chapters that were written from Jacob's point of view. This was my least favorite of the series, but there were enough interesting twists in the book that I liked it overall. ( )

If you haven't read my previous Twilight series reviews, it may benefit you to read them so you know where I stand with this series.

As with all of the other Twilight books, I didn't enjoy this one. However, this fourth and final installment in the Twilight series was definitely the most interesting. In this book, Bella officially joins the Cullen family. This book is definitely aimed towards an older audience than before. Sex scenes and allusions to sex occur in various parts of the book. From the beginning, it was obvious that this book would be even weirder than the rest. I don't want to give anything away, but suffice it to say unnatural surprises and the formation of bizarre relationships were the groundwork of the final novel in the series.

The book had a painfully slow start, and for the first 138 pages I had to fight off immense boredom and force myself to read through. Most thankfully, the book is then interjected with a section told from the perspective of Jacob. In a series of books where you are constantly stuck listening to the insane blathering of Bella's mind, Jacob's rational thought processes offer a refreshing reprieve.

Had this book been written by any other author, I feel that it would have been relatively enjoyable. Unfortunately, we are stuck with Stephanie Meyer, who possesses the writing skills of a fourteen year old girl. Stephanie Meyer's books would be about 10 pages long if she didn't repeat herself as much as she does. As I said in my review of The Host, there is something in her writing style that reminds me of students who write term papers and add adjectives and repeat themselves a dozen times in an effort to make their papers longer. I could sum up her entire series, not just a single book, in less than a paragraph:

Bella loves Edward. Edward loves Bella. Jacob loves Bella. Bella loves Jacob. Vampires are beautiful. Bella can't live without Edward. Bella has a near death experience in every book.

I mean, seriously... in this book, when Bella becomes a vamp, Meyer goes on for pages upon pages about how Bella's senses are heightened and the Cullens are even more beautiful than ever. She then goes into describing just how beautiful each individual Cullen is with her new vampire eyes. Would it not suffice to just say something to the effect of, "If it were possible, the Cullens were even more beautiful with my new vision than they were when I was a human."? Perhaps not that cheesy, but just about anything else would work! How many times does Bella have to tell us she's freakishly strong, or that she has incredible self control before Meyer trusts that we've got the point? The answer: the entire book. To the end, she continues to repeat such details.

As if repeating herself a hundred times weren't enough, Meyer turned to redundancy in this book! Not only can you learn every five pages that Edward is beautiful, but you also get to experience statements such as this one

"I'm laughing because I am in shock. And I am in shock because I am completely amazed."

Let's pull a thesaurus on this one

Main Entry: shocked
Part of Speech: adjective
Definition: startled
Synonyms: aghast, amazed, appalled, astonished, astounded, dismayed, offended, stunned, upset

At one point in the book, Meyer tries to subtly provide an excuse to mention the index at the end of the book so the reader can follow who is who. Many books have means for the reader to follow along, so I'm not knocking the index. My issue is with her feeling the need to add a line in the book. Why not provide the index at the beginning, as most books do? The addition of the line "[Jacob] grumbled to Renesmee that someone was going to have to provide an index if anyone expected him to keep all the new bloodsuckers' names straight.* (The * leading to a footnote regarding the page you could find the index on)" The line almost seems like an afterthought, as though she decided to randomly drop in a paragraph about Jake as an excuse to mention the index (or perhaps an editor commented that it was too confusing).

The end of the book was relatively exciting, but couldn't make up for the slow start or poor writing. As with every other book in the series, danger is always averted and the "Happily Ever After" ending was painfully predictable. I am happy things worked out for Jacob, who was in my opinion one of the only tolerable characters in the series. In the end, the reading was not enjoyable enough for this book to be considered a "good read" in my honest opinion. I was hoping the series would pull it out in the end, but alas, it was a dud!

Clearly teen novel but fun and many messages to be gleaned from the story. ( )