Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Review: New Moon


New Moon by Stephenie Meyer

5 stars

Okay, I'm a bad YA librarian, I'm totally behind. I should've read Eclipse by now and I only just finished New Moon. Bad, bad.

You don't need me to tell you about this one - if you know about the glory that was Twilight, you know about New Moon. If you don't, run out and get Twilight immediately and get started!

But quickly, just in case, New Moon continues the saga of Pacific Northwest girl Bella and her vampire love, Edward. For her own good, Edward leaves her, and she plunges into despair and self-destructive behaviour. With the help of Jacob Black, from the nearby First Nations reservation, she starts to come out of it, just in time for Jacob to start going through some weird changes and for Edward to return (come on, you knew he would, I'm not spoiling it). And, of course, danger of both the mortal and immortal kind follows.

The intense, brooding, divinely beautiful Edward is still total literary crush material. I still find accident-prone vampire-lover Bella interesting and I was only tempted to yell at her to snap out of it a couple of times, after months of depression. And actually, Meyer uses a simple but effective and rather cool device to show Bella's months of despair, rather than making us go through them all. As some other bloggers have pointed out, I didn't enjoy it quite as much as Twilight, but I think that's natural - your first exposure to a wonderful story is always the most powerful.

In one way, my postponing of reading this was smart - I wasn't waiting in agony for Eclipse to come out, like everyone else. Of course now I have to wait for the 50-odd people ahead of me in the holds list, but it's still not as bad as a whole year. :-)

14 comments:

Becky said...

I enjoy this series very much! I'll be curious to read your opinion on Eclipse.

Kelly said...

I have this on my list to read.

Rachel said...

Count your blessings! here there are 300+ people in line for all the books in the series.. So I had to break dwon I buy them!

Heather said...

I had to buy them too. I also got my sister hooked on them!

tinylittlelibrarian said...

Myuptopia - I hope you'll enjoy it. I bet you will!

Likeastar - wow, the only book we've had that's gotten that many is the last Harry Potter, though it was around 500 at its peak, I think. All righty, I'm definitely lucky. :)

Heather - it's easy to get folks hooked on them, I just recommended them to a friend, too.

alisonwonderland said...

i love this series! (have i told you that already?!)

tinylittlelibrarian said...

Alison - I'm not sure, but that's okay either way! I'm always happy to hear about other fans. That's the fun thing about the book blogosphere!

Julie Cleghorn said...

I am on the waiting list for this one too....I do want to own the series eventually but I think I will wait for paperback. I stumbled on Twilight by accident and I am sure glad I did.

And Off the topic, I am thinking about getting a masters in Lib Science. Would you be willing to chat with me about that?

tinylittlelibrarian said...

Yeah, I usually wait for paperbacks when it comes to owning, too.

And sure, I'm up for an MLS chat. :) You can e-mail me if you like at tinylibrarian [at] hotmail [dot]com

Anonymous said...

This book is amazing!! i counld not put it down!!

Anonymous said...

How long did it take you to read this book?

Anonymous said...

I found that the middle of New Moon was rather lifeless. but it got a lot better near the end!

tinylittlelibrarian said...

I can't remember how long it took me to read it - probably 4 or 5 days - I only read it at night because it was too heavy to carry around with me.

And I agree, the middle dragged a bit with Bella's moping and the Jacob the werewolf part (since it was pretty darn obvious that's what he was) - but the ending made up for it.

Anonymous said...

TWILIGHT was epicc.
truly the most amazing thing i`d ever read
the writing gets you so attached to the charicters that you will be screaming and talking to your book , no joke
i was left begging for the next book i couldent way to see how it would play out

NEW MOON , took me two days to read i couldent stop
the middle got a little dull and sad but of corse edward came and saved the day
im so inlove with him
ahhhhhh

this book is the next harry potter but bigger and better
and for a slightly older audience

( L )
true love , i just started eclipse