Breaking Dawn Reviews

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. If you loved Breaking Dawn and don’t want to see it criticized, I’ll warn you now not to read my review. That being said, let me begin by saying that when I first read Twilight, I was hooked. I read New Moon in one sitting. I awaited the release of Eclipse with great anticipation. Sadly, Eclipse was the beginning of the end. It left me disappointed enough not to have high expectations for Breaking Dawn. Even at that, Breaking Dawn shattered my lowest expectations. I am stunned at the depths to which this once-revered author has plunged! From this point on I will refer to Breaking Dawn as B.D., aka “Bitter Disappointment,” or, if you prefer, “Boring Depravity,” “Bloody Drama,” “Brain Drain,” or my husband’s personal favorite, “Bloody Diapers”.

Where do I begin? How about with my least favorite character, Bella? She began the series with a lot of promise. Sure, some people said that she wasn’t well defined in the first book, but I never had a problem with her. Throughout New Moon and Eclipse, her character starts to decline. In B.D., Bella becomes intolerable. This girl is unbelievably selfish. She begins the book whining about the beautiful, expensive car Edward bought her. She whines about the wedding preparations, the dress, the ring. Poor thing has to *gasp* marry the man of her dreams! The injustice! She is far more concerned about nameless, faceless people mocking her for getting married young than she is about the happiness of the man she claims to love more than life itself. And her treatment of Jacob! Where to begin? This is a good kid had the misfortune to fall in love with her and though I had issues with his manipulation of her emotions at the end of Eclipse, still, he’s a teenage guy and you have to cut him some slack. But come on, Bella! Once she realizes she loves him, but that she loves Edward more, she chooses Edward. Fine. So let the poor guy go! Let him move on with his life! But no, she has to have her cake and eat it too. She hurts both Edward, the one she has chosen, and Jacob, the one she has rejected, by refusing to cut ties with him. She claims to hate herself for hurting him, says at one point that it’s “criminal” to injure him as much as she does, but will she love him enough to let him let go and move on? Nope. She wouldn’t “feel whole” without him, so she continues to cling to him. Even after she’s married. The culmination of this extreme selfish lack of consideration for anyone’s feelings but her own is when she slips and refers to the unborn baby as “EJ”. Did she even think to consider whether Edward would be happy about having his child named after his rival? No, she just did what she darn well wanted to do, and gave no thought to what Edward would want. Bella has become a tyrant. What Queen Bella wants, Queen Bella must have.

Now, a little bit about Edward. He was what made Twilight so magical. He was mysterious, romantic, beautiful, all the many things that the hero of a good book should be. Edward stole the hearts of most of the female readers of this series. Yet, by the time you finish B.D., you find yourself either feeling terribly sorry for him because he chose such a lame heroine, or just contemptuous of him for becoming a doormat, a slave to Bella’s whims. I thought I’d scream if I had to hear him say “If it makes her happy, I’ll do it, even if it’s not what’s best for her” one more time. In B.D., the author sends the message through Edward that love and blind devotion are the same thing. They aren’t. Truly loving someone isn’t giving them free reign to stomp all over you and everything in their path, just because they think it will make them happy. Real love encompasses the occasional appropriate guidance of the loved one away from self-destructive desires toward a better way. But here, we are taught that if you love someone, you let them have what they want, all the time, without exception.

As for the story development, my greatest frustration is that the author created a very intricate world, complete with detailed descriptions of what could and could not happen in it. Then she decided not to play by these rules. Yes, I am referring to the sudden and inexplicable ability of a vampire to father a child. This felt very contrived and unbelievable, and introduced such a bizarre, nightmarish chain of events that I could hardly believe I was reading the story that began as Twilight. This baby feeds on the blood of its mother and slowly sucks her life away? Bella has to drink human blood, while she’s still human, to save her life and the life of her child? And she LIKES IT? This is the same, human Bella that turned green and almost passed out while doing blood typing in Biology class, right? Okay, I could see that her aversion to blood was going to go away after becoming a vampire. But while she was still human? Really? I felt sick the whole time I read about her drinking gallons of blood a day to sustain the child. Bleh. I still don’t get the whole scene where Edward asks Jacob to offer to make babies with Bella. What?!? Again, is this the author’s attempt at showing us the extent of true love? It was twisted and disturbing.

And the delivery of the baby…that was just plain disgusting. Bella vomiting gallons of blood, her bones snapping right and left, blood vessels popping in her eyes, Edward biting into her womb to get the baby out, and the tender moment when mommy sees baby for the first time is marred by said baby taking a bite out of her mommy. Ick! And I’ll just join the legions of people who are saying, “RENESMEE?!?” You’ve got to be kidding. This from the author who tastefully chose names like Edward, Bella, Carlisle, Alice…why didn’t she just name her “Brangelina” or “TomKat”? Or “Bedward?” I will also join the protests against Jacob imprinting on Bella and Edward’s daughter. I could see when the concept of imprinting was introduced that it would be the author’s way of making a happy ending for Jacob at the end of the story, and that was fine. I like a happy ending, and of course I wanted to see Jacob happy. But are we so inflexible that we can’t be happy with Jacob imprinting on a nice, new girl to the story? No, Bella must have her way. She can’t be happy without Jacob as a part of her life. And we’re supposed to feel happy and satisfied that she gets her way in the form of Jacob as her son-in-law? How is that a happy ending?

At the top of my list of grievances is the destruction of the message that was communicated so clearly in the first three books. Once Bella falls in love with Edward, she is confronted with some very difficult choices. If she wants to be with Edward, she must choose to leave human life behind her and become a vampire. The value of Eclipse was that it forced Bella to look long and hard at what she was choosing if she decided to become a vampire. She would have to cut ties with her human life…her mother, father, and everyone human that mattered to her. She could never have children of her own. She would have to deal with the bloodlust of being a newborn vampire. She would spend a significant amount of time developing the self-control and restraint that the rest of the Cullens had achieved. One of the most compelling elements of the first three books is Edward’s angst, his agonizing about the state of his soul as a vampire. He grieves what he sees as the loss of his soul. This is at the heart of his great reluctance to change Bella, the reason for his disappearance in New Moon. All the vampires who have chosen not to feed on humans hate what they have become. They are conflicted about who they are. None of them who remember life as a human can say with conviction that they wouldn’t go back if they could. Bella has to confront all of this and choose to sacrifice the value of her humanity for the love she feels for Edward. All of this is well and good and presents a very thought-provoking storyline. Then, in B.D., every one of these issues is neatly sidestepped in order to create an obstacle-free path to a happily-ever after ending for Queen Bella. First of all, from the moment she opens her eyes as a newborn vampire, everything is better. The world shimmers. She experiences everything so much more intensely, things are more beautiful, more colorful, more wonderful. What’s not to love about being a vampire? Within minutes, she is exhibiting the self-control that everyone else took decades to achieve. And how about the whole I-have-to-have-sex-before-I-become-a-vampire-because-all-
my-human-emotions-will-be-gone-for-awhile? Nope! Not only does she still experience all the emotions and passions she had as a human, but they are intensified! By the time we’re finished reading about Bella’s new life as a vampire, we have to wonder why anyone wouldn’t want to be a vampire. All the build-up for Bella to grow and mature through sacrifice and self-denial, wiped away. So much better for her not to have to suffer through that stuff, right? And she manages to get immortality and a baby, to boot. We have to wonder if everyone who claimed that becoming a vampire was a serious, heavy choice was just delusional. The nobility of the message is sacrificed in order to create a neat, happy ending for everyone.

I haven’t seen much, if any, speculation on what the cover of the book is trying to communicate to the reader, so here’s my take. The big white queen is, you guessed it, Queen Bella, the white vampire. The red pawn is you (or I), the blood-red reader, about to be sucked dry in the wake of the Queen’s destruction. Beware!

I wish Stephenie Meyer had ended with Twilight or at least an extended version of New Moon. I think I’ll be hauling my copies of the last three to the local library as a donation and trying to just enjoy Twilight for what it was before the rest of this mess came into play.

The best book in the series, Breaking Dawn gives you more than you could have ever expected. There are too many things i love about this book. Jacob finally having a place in Bella's life, Renesme, Edwards hearing Bella's thoughts. As much as I wish there were another four books about the Cullens, this was the best consulation we could get.

i say its a really good book it keeps readers going and want more it shows what people have been waiting for in the first three books and it always keeps my attention and I'm sure it must keep others attention too. This book is my favorite out of all of stephanie meyers books. The twilight saga was the best and New York's top seller.I must have read this book over 4 times!!!

I absolutly love this book its my fav out of all of them. i really dont know why its my fav either its because edward and bella get busy on ilse esme(heehee) or cuz bella is finally a vampire. yay!but its my fave i've probably read this book like 35 times hahaha

personally, i dont understand why some people are complaining about the book! i get stephenie meyer when she said, [by the way, juss for accurate sakes, this is not word for word what she said, its put into my own words... the main idea is still there though...] "the whole series before breaking dawn, to me, led up to the last two pages, when he [edward] finally was able to hear her [bellas] thoughts." i cried when i read the last two pages for two reasons; 1 because he finally read her thoughts, and 2 because it ended and the wonderful world of twilight was over!! back to my point, breaking dawn, was and forever will be in my opinion, the perfect ending for the twilight saga. renesmee / nessie had a part of bella that could never be forgotten [her eyes] i mean, think about it, the greatest treasure in a couples life is [apart from each other...] their CHILDREN!! a small defenseless creature that has the eyes, the heartbeat of her once human mother, the skin, the voice, the beauty and strength of her father! a creature who is half vampire and half human, with the advantages of both is renesmee!! bella and edward got the chance that no other vampire or human couple had. a creature made of both. and to have both parents survive is a plus!! i personally dnt understand y there were unfair comments about the book, but i guess some people were a little too critical. [again, no offense intended] id also like to add that if stephenie meyer does continue writing in the twilight world, il be happy, mostly because the perfect world of all my dreams would continure, but a bit upset because then she'd to have to pull out a bigger masterpiece to end it. i love the twilight saga, glad my friends forced me to read it, and cnt thank stephenie meyer enough and anyone else who encouraged her to publish, for creating a world that has made me believe again that even creatures like vampires, can have some good in their undead heart.

i loved the book it was soooooo awesome but the jacob part was boring.
i fell in love with the book

Well I'm a tad disappointed, unfortunately. On one hand I loved the book because I love the series and the characters. The first part had me so hooked. The change of perspective in book/part 2 (Breaking dawn is done in three parts or three "books") was great and probably my most favourite part of the whole thing but there was something lacking come part 3.
Then there are some of the things that happened that I was not expecting. That had me stopping in disbelief, for the most part I found it hard to put down but unlike the other books in the series I found it easier to put down when I had to. At first I thought perhaps I was more disappointed from the book because the series had ended but after thinking on it for awhile I realise it's because of the book itself. For starters all the drama and intrigue seemed to be in the first half of the book or coming to a close at the end of part 2. Then there was waiting for something exceptional to happen with Bella. Sure something happened eventually but when it did I was left wondering "was that all?", which brings me to the last confrontation and well for all the build up and expectation I think it fell short.
I still love the book and enjoyed it as far as a good little read goes but it's nowhere near my favourite in the series. I think the best thing to do is, if you do read this book, to read it without high expectations (a bit hard for all the Twilight fans out there I'm sure).

Breaking Dawn is, while a satisfactory conclusion to the story of Bella and Edward, not particularly necessary to the series overall.

At the end of Eclipse, we were left with a hope for a promising future with Bella and Edward, and while the fact that she hadn’t been bitten yet was troublesome, who truly could doubt that it would happen? With Breaking Dawn, Meyer brings us back to our favorite characters, but it wasn’t such a happy reunion for me.

I admit, that I enjoyed seeing the reaction of Charlie to Bella’s wedding, and there were many revelations that enriched the story as a whole. But writing an entire novel to fit these things in seemed superfluous. Overall, I found much of the book melodramatic and slightly annoying and I believe that these things could have just as easily been incorporated into a short story or two; and would made it a much more enjoyable read.

What Breaking Dawn lacked, compared to the other novels, was real substance and conflict. While I have never read the Twilight books for their intriguing plots (which are quite predictable at times), they still have included major dilemmas for characters I loved. There was also strong motivation for the choices the characters made, and the actions that they did. In this installment, however, all major conflict was resolved nearly within the first half of the book.

Much of the last half of the book is spent describing preparation for a major event that ultimately amounts to nothing.

All in all, I think that this last book was just a piece of fluff that, while it happily ends the series, was not quite necessary.