New Moon by Stephanie Meyer

3/5 Stars

So after reading the first novel, I began to sort of understand why one would be on Team Edward, but after reading this, WHY FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WOULD ANYONE NOT BE TEAM JACOB.

The novel begins with Bella celebrating her birthday with the Cullens, but it doesn't exactly go as planned. In a nutshell, lots of unintentional blood was shed, causing Edward to believe that he was endangering Bella. He leaves with little notice and a short goodbye. Bella goes into a deep depression, so dramatic to the point where there were literally just 5 whole months of blank pages. She begins to hear Edwards's voice whenever she gets a rush of adrenaline which causes her to basically become an adrenaline junkie.

She turns to Jacob, and their friendship was probably the best and worst part of this novel. They begin spending almost every day together working on old motorcycles Bella finds. And we got a glimpse of Jacobs's affection towards Bella in the first novel, but it becomes especially prevalent after spending so much time together.

He is literally the most understanding, intuitive, and kind soul, I swear. I used to only be Team Jacob after watching the films because, I mean, Taylor Lautner. But the book version of Jacob is literally the epitome of just an overall good guy. He notices Bella's changes after Edward leaves and understands not to force her to talk about it and is just there for her when she needs it.

Its also impossible not to mention the way Bella continuously leads Jacob on because he is the only one who "makes her feel normal again."

The utter fact that Bella literally lies, manipulates, and uses Jacob and then calls him her 'best friend' literally had me clenching my fists as I turned the page. She states numerous times that she wished she "could choose to have him belong to [her]" literally disgusted me after she leads him on the entire novel.

On another note, I loved being introduced to the werewolf species in this saga. Meyer writes about vampires, despite the intriguing characters that the Cullens are, making them seem cold, serious, and stoic. Reading the parts where Jacob interacts with Sam and the rest of the pack, they seemed so playful, free, and warm, which is something that the first novel lacked.

The ending just downright annoyed me. I don't know how on earth Stephanie Meyer wrote Jacob to be the way he is and expect the audience to be fine with when Bella drops everything to save Edward.

Overall, the novel had a lot of instances where I would get increasingly pissed off. But I guess that can be a good thing, right? It goes to show how invested I was. Despite all of the listed complaints, most of which regard our lovely protagonist, I finished this novel in less than 24 hours, and I was extremely entertained. Like I literally could not put the book down, probably because I fell in love with Jacob's character.

Count on my review of Eclipse.