Spoilery Book Reviews

Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer

Back of the book

"Bella?"

Edward's soft voice came from behind me. He pulled me into his arms at once, and kissed me. His kiss frightened me. There was too much tension, too strong an edge to the way his lips crushed mine – like he was afraid we had only so much time left to us.

As Seattle is ravaged by a string of mysterious killings and a malicious vampire continues her quest for revenge, Bella once again finds herself surrounded by danger. In the midst of it all, she is forced to choose between her love for Edward and her friendship with Jacob – knowing that her decision has the potential to ignite the ageless struggle between vampire and werewolf. With her graduation approaching, Bella has one more decision to make: life or death. But which is which?

My thoughts

The first quarter of the book is awful. It's full of examples of Edward being controlling, not allowing Bella to see Jacob. Firstly, saying she's forbidden, then tampering with her car and escalating to staging a hostage sleepover to keep her away from Jacob. Bella clearly wants to see Jacob, and makes her frustration very known, but still justifies Edwards' actions because of the whole vampire/werewolf thing. Even with that in the equation, it's red flag behaviour. When Edward does his 180o attitude switch things get better. Before then, their relationship is all problems with no redeeming qualities. Jacob literally says to Bella about "controlling, abusive teenage relationships," (pg 198), hitting the nail right on the head. Charlie also has this insight although tries to approach it more gently "I don't think you should dump all your other friends for your boyfriend," (pg 10) and mentioning if she had more or a life outside Edward the break-up toll might not have been so bad. Even after Edward's behaviour switch, Bella is hesitant about upsetting Edward, asking his permission and internalising that 'wow he's so great' because Edward allows her to see her friend. For those who need to hear it: if you feel the need to ask your partner for permission to see your friends, male, female or werewolf alike, please re-evaluate or straight up leave the relationship.

While picking apart this book it stunned me how empty Bella's life is. She has no hobbies or interests, and flat, two-dimensional friends that she doesn't care about. Her friends only pop up when convenient and Bella has no emotional attachment to any of them. Occasionally her interest of reading is mentioned, however it is only ever used to draw parallels between Bella's current situation and a quote from a book (ahem, Wuthering Heights). Bella's lack of interests could be explained away as depression, or poor writing. Either way it sets the scene for the obsessive way she clings to Edward, and her only future aspiration to become a vampire. I've never questioned this before but now her empty life almost bores me. Outside of Edward and vampirism surely there was anything, travel, study, skydiving, just something that could spark her interest.

Eclipse was pulling me further to Team Jacob until he started the emotional manipulation. Up until this book Jacob was the over-friendly and honest good guy. He told Bella he wanted more, Bella said she didn't, and their friendship was still okay. Throughout Eclipse he oversteps the boundaries with a non-consensual kiss, ultimatums, and a suicide threat manipulation for a 'consensual' kiss. All of the conversations about 'fighting' for Bella and playing a game, playing dirty, "may the best man win" bullshit was truly foul. I feel any sane person with an idea of toxic relationships would walk away and block ANY person who used language insinuating relationships are a game. Bella is a human being, not a prize, for whichever male manages to prove himself to be the most toxic boyfriend. Bella has already blitzed through so many red flags that of course men discussing in front of her face about fighting for her doesn't ring any alarm bells, and she takes everything from both of them at face value and falls into all of their emotional manipulations. I almost feel sorry for naïve Bella.

I'm going to conclude here, even though I'm sure I've missed many other pressing things I could have discussed (such as a coercive marriage engagement), however I don't take notes when reading and mostly just get lost in it. Despite all the trash talk, one thing I couldn't find fault in was the stories told within Eclipse. I loved Billy Black recounting the history of the Quileute tribe, and Jasper telling his different introduction to vampire life. Wasn't a huge fan of Rosalie's story, but she's not ever made out to be an overly likeable character anyway. I still wouldn't recommend young readers to pick this up and assume the relationships portrayed within are how teenage relationship are 'supposed' to be like. This series is instead a manual of what not to do, and our one good role model up until this book (Jacob Black) lets us down severely in this one.

TL:DR

Eclipse: a lesson in identifying red flag behaviour in relationships such as control and emotional manipulation. See also, Stephenie Meyer writes made-up histories better than the made-up present.

The short second life of Bree Tanner

I originally wanted to write a review on this one and then I read it, and honestly there's not enough of it to talk about. I liked it (no surprises there) and it was interesting to see a different type of introduction to vampirism, like when Jaspers' origin story was told. I loved the exploration of the idea that new vampires only know what they've been told, which makes them rely on personal superstitions to fill in any blanks. It was nice to see a vampire behaving like you'd expect from a vampire (bloodthirsty) but also not being inherently the bad guy. Pretty much every vampire outside of the Cullens is villainised in Twilight because only the Cullens are 'vegetarians' however Bree wasn't a villain but also wasn't a saint. She was just a kid trying to do the right thing in the situation she found herself in.