Customer Reviews: Read 75 more reviews...
 Powerful January 6, 2009
K. INNS (London)
`New Moon' is the squeal to the fabulous `Twilight'. In this book Bella's life takes a turn for the worst when Edward, her beloved, decides to leave in order to protect her. I really don't want to spoil this for fans and perspective readers so I won't give much away. The thing about this book is that if you love Bella and Edward, and what they have, you will find this book painful. When he leaves Bella's sadness is truly touching and powerful. To say she is devastated is an understatement - she describes it as a whole in her chest and to cope she often wraps her arms around her self - she calls it `keeping herself together'. She suffers severely which for me was quite hard to read, she has to think how she will get through every hour of everyday, the worst part is that she can't see herself surviving. Jacob Black kind of comes to her rescue and Edward is missing in action for most of the book, he only comes back in the end- the dramatic climax. The last few chapters are some of the most romantic I have ever read. Edward explains why he left and also how he feels about her. His explanations aren't cliche they are honest which I think is what makes it so touching. I gave this book 4 out of 5 and it lost marks only because I found the absence of Edward, and it's effect on Bella quite upsetting. Having said this though it really is a must read.
 Not as good as Twilight January 4, 2009
M. Burton (Essex)
I would have to say that New Moon is my least favourite of the Twilight Saga. Being a member of Team Edward I couldnt help but rush through New Moon just to get back to Edward. Although New Moon is about Bella and Jacob's story it is also lacking in that gripping feeling that Twilight had.
I'd recommend this to any Twilight fan because it does set the plot for the rest of the books but dont expect fireworks
As Good As Twilight January 4, 2009
Miss K (UK)
New Moon is the 2nd installment in this series - I enjoyed Twilight although my biggest complaint about that book was that it took a LONG time to really get going. Despite this, I enjoyed the book because the final third more than made up for the mild boredom experienced in the first two thirds!
With New Moon, the book starts out well but then there is a huge chunk of the book spent just passing the the time at snail pace and I found myself skimming through much of the narrative as it was starting to get tedious.
However, if you are a fan of Twilight, no doubt you will love this second installment as it really follows the same kind of structure & style as the first book. If (like me), you find yourself bored at first, rest assured that it DOES get better. The narrative really picks up and there's plenty of exciting action in the second half of the book so once again I have been won over!
Also interestingly, Stephenie Meyer's writing is vastly better in the second book than the first so this can only be a good thing! Overall, New Moon is just as enjoyable as Twilight so I highly recommend it to Twilight fans & I'm looking forward to reading the third installment, Eclipse!
 Threatens to be good, but instead remains very disturbing. January 3, 2009
BigJeff (Wales)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
At the start of New Moon, fearing for Bella's safety, the Cullen family flee the town.
This is a brilliant start to the book, since Edward is such an unlikeable character it's good to be rid of him.
But we're not, as the book follows Bella spiralling into a horrible depression, not wanting to see or speak to anyone. She resorts to putting herself into life-threatening situations to hear Edward's voice.
And this is where the book begins to disturb me, very, very much. Because to Bella Swan, Edward is the only thing in life and without her she doesn't want to live.
She's only a teenager, and she has a lot of life ahead of her, but she already wants to end life because she has lost her first boyfriend. And this is what worries me, because many teenage girls worship these books, and New Moon sends out the message that it's perfectly fine to be obsessed with someone to the point that you would kill yourself if they left.
But New Moon as a better side. Bella starts to hang out with Jacob Black, her old childhood friend, and what confuses me is that this couple are perfect together. I'm not part of the Team Edward/Jacob thing, but Stephenie Meyer writes things like 'being with Jacob is as easy as breathing' and the two of them actually talk about things unlike the normal couple who spend all the time arguing.
There is a side-plot including Jacob Black and his friends, and this shows occasional moments of brilliance.
But instead of sustaining this, the book goes back to mopy Bella territory, and eventually the book carries on the Romeo and Juliet theme by almost apeing the ending, but Stephenie Meyer seems to bottle it, giving the book a 'happy' ending instead.
Once again, the book nearly has an exciting, action-filled scene, but once again it is just missed.
I give this three stars for the Jacob Black subplot, as without this part, the book would just be a horrible, disgusting mess.
Like Marmite - you either love it or you hate it January 3, 2009
K. Hewitson
Ok, so Twilight took me about 2 days to read. I'm very excited about reading the next in this epic series, I skip college to run into town and go buy the other 3 books, but - unfortunately it was New Moon. I believe it's pretty much on par with Breaking Dawn but for different reasons.
Spoilers - Sorry!
The first couple of chapter were great. We got to hear more about Bella `I'm-so-imperfect' Swan and Edward `I'm-always-right' Cullen's relationship and how it had lasted the most amazing summer. I, like most of the female Twilight reading population, fell head over heels for Edward, although I won't disagree that he is pretty much personality-less and does little else than be all over Bella. I fell for the idea of Edward and the corny things he says and does, as well as the `fate' ridden relationship the couple claim to have. I'm the first to admit I'm superficial, no need to tell me I am. I also loved Twilight, but apart from what I try to portray in my review of Twilight, I couldn't honestly tell you why. I just loved it.
Getting back to New Moon, because of the nature of the first book in the saga, the first few chapters of New Moon were everything I'd wanted for Bella, as much as I hated her. Then Edward leaves our hopeless heroine, saying that he no longer loves her and that neither is good for the other. This is when the book spirals quite swiftly into disaster. Then comes the blank pages with the months of Bella's lonely life written on them - I wasn't sure what to make of these. On the one hand it shows how her life after Edward was all one big blur of depression and that she isn't simply going to get over him, however, on the other hand, I fail to see why this is needed, and to concur with another reviewer, I feel that maybe Meyer ran out of ways to tell the reader about Bella's depression and mental state.
So... if you had any problems with Bella in the first book and grew to hate her in the way that I did, you won't want to read New Moon. It truly is a long, drawling, mental and depressive book. Bella develops even more irritating habits than she did before. For one, laying her arms across her stomach to try and hold together some sort of hole that has formed in her body, with her true love gone. I felt as if this was over played and that there so much more that could be done with this story line. She also gets into extreme depression and starts to embrace danger in order to imagine Edward's voice in her head - this sort of content forcing me to question Meyer's sanity. She tries motorcycling, cliff diving and even walking up to potential rapists in the street all in order to hear his voice. I felt no sympathy for her at this point as she wasn't even trying to get over Edward; she was simply wallowing in self-pity and getting annoyed with her father when he didn't give her any. She still continues to be a compulsive liar and a rude, immature girl, particularly towards her Dad. Towards the end of the 300-page part of this depressing read, she even starts to inherit stalker-ish traits from her, obsessed ex-boyfriend, for example: calling Jacob ever half an hour for a whole day because she doesn't get a reply.
One good thing that comes from this `number-one bestseller' is Jacob as a character. Although you don't really get to know him too much because you're to busy trying to ignore Bella, his quirky and normal characteristics make him an easily likeable, but also dislikeable, person. His presence definitely brings the book up in my estimations. I like Edward, don't get me wrong, and I believe Edward and Bella's relationship was the only plausible conclusions for the series to come to, but I feel that Jacob never gets fully explored until the point that the readers hate him for being plain. I found the middle 300-or-so-pages to be hard to stomach as nothing much of interest becomes apparent.
There's not a lot of involvement from the rest of Cullen's, which is unfortunate as some of them were promising characters. But inevitably, there's the big reunion at the back end of the book. Another part I enjoyed. Finally, a plot is introduced, and there's another race-against-the-clock ending where Bella and Alice make it all the way to Italy in order to save Edward from revealing his true form to a plaza full of mortals, essentially ending in his death. Then there's the Vultori, a very strange and quite hard to understand group of vampires, which never quite achieve anything, although the insinuation of the upcoming danger was interesting to read about. In this part, also, Bella has to face a genuine vampire feeding, at which point she finally seems to grasp the danger behind the situation she is in - there's a first time for everything, I suppose.
And so we are set up for the next entitlement with our newly formed love triangle and hero and heroine being reunited. You also learn that - surprise, surprise - Edward never stopped loving Bella and he left her for her own sake. Woohoo. We are successfully back to square one.
By the time the Cullen's are reintroduced into the story, you're ready to throw the book against the wall and give up with the tedious non-existent plot of New Moon. The bits of this that are bad are insanely bad, however, the bit that are good are incredibly good. Worth a read only to keep up with the story line.
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