New Moon by Stephenie Meyer

All is not well between demon-magnet Bella and Edward Cullen, her vampire Romeo. An innocent papercut at Edward's house puts Bella in grave danger when various members of the Cullen family can barely resist their hunger at the smell of blood. The Cullens promptly leave town, afraid of endangering Edward's beloved, and Bella sinks into an overwhelming depression. Months later, she finally emerges from her funk to rebuild her life, focusing on her friendship with besotted teen Jacob from the reservation. Bella's unhealthy enthrallment to Edward leads her into dangerous and self-destructive behavior despite her new friends, and supernatural complications are bound to reappear. Bella's being hunted by an evil vampire, and Jacob's adolescent male rage turns out to be incipient lycanthropy: It seems many Quileute Indians become werewolves in the presence of vampires, their natural enemies. Psychic miscommunications and angst-ridden dramatic gestures lead to an exciting page-turner of a conclusion drenched in the best of Gothic romantic excess. Despite Bella's flat and obsessive personality, this tale of tortured demon lovers entices.

Okay, so let's be honest ... if this were the first book, there wouldn't even have been a second. Yawn. Look, I like Jacob, and to be fair what was coming was hugely obvious ... since (hello!) the "surprise twist" is written in the back cover write up above. And their relationship that was developing was great ... but, it just really fell short for me (the book in general, not their relationship, that was one of the few good things). Throwing werewolves into the mix was one step too far for me. I mean Bella can somehow easily accept that the love of her life is a vampire but the fact that she was even remotely surprised by it, just plain annoyed me.

There was one other teeny tiny part of the story I liked ... and I remain hopeful that it becomes a huge giant awesome part of the future story (can't give it away here ... although I think I may actually be the last person *in the world* to be reading these books!). I've heard the first & the third books are the really good ones tho, so I hold out hope and will keep reading ... next month when I get the next installment from book club ;)

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