New Moon Discussion

I am so excited to get started on New Moon, I just hope I can finish it in time to also read Eclipse again before next Friday. But actually I am grateful that I do have all this reading to do, it keeps my mind occupied so I don’t go too crazy before Breaking Dawn finally comes out.
Okay to start out the discussion on New Moon, let me just say poor Jasper. He didn’t mean to attack Bella! It was just an accident. Who knows how guilty he must be feeling.
Anyway, I absolutely hate the goodbye scene between Bella and Edward, I mean that is brutal! Edward hits so far below the belt it makes it hard to read. And it is also sad that the side of Bella that always felt she didn’t deserve Edward, was so strong that he just had to say he didn’t want her once and she believed whole heartedly.
Honestly I didn’t blame Jessica at all when she got mad at Bella after the movie. I mean yes Jessica is a little on the selfish and shallow side, but here is this girl who has hardly talked to you in months and all of a sudden wants to hang out, so you humor them and then they try to ditch you for some random guys who could have been dangerous in some dark alley. I mean if she was a better person and a more caring friend she would have tried to talk to Bella and about what that was all about. But still, I would be pretty pissed too.
Then when Bella hears the voice for the first time, I really and truly believed that he was there. I mean I know that Bella as the character knew he really wasn’t, but I truly believed that in the end Edward would come back and say “yes that was me, I was with you all along.”
At the end of chapter 4, Bella describes in detail, how the deep the pain goes and what it does to her. As much as I hate that part because it is just sooo awful, at the same time I like that part because it is just such good writing. Edward isn’t dead but Bella is doing some serious grieving. I also like in chapter 5 when she gives a description of what she looks like now and she is starting to look like a vampire, that’s ironic but funny.
Okay so on page 131, Jacob comes back, and for the next 251 pages I will try with everything in me to not gag anytime Bella or him start to push me too far. When I was first reading the book, I didn’t mind Jacob so much, I was glad that Bella had someone to help her and when she talks about him being like a sun, “whenever someone was within his gravitational pull, Jacob warmed them.” that’s nice. But it is hard for me to bring back that same tolerance after reading Eclipse. It isn’t so much that I HATE Jacob, more that I just hate him when he is anywhere near Bella, not that she isn’t to blame herself. Ugh, I hate it when they play the whole age came, gross! I roll my eyes so many times at that part, I give myself a migraine!
And the one thing I don’t like about Charlie at this point is the fact that he is so willing to let her be with Jacob. I mean, if I saw my child go through a breakup and react that way, so depressed and lifeless for months, and then just THREE days after they finally start to build their life back up I see them holding hands with someone else…I would be like “Hell NO!” I know that at the end of chapter 6, Jacob is only holding her hand when Charlie sees them to lead her out of the dark, and I know that Charlie really likes Jacob. But still, I would be so much more reluctant as a parent. Obviously my kid can’t handle rejection very well so maybe she needs to build her life back without the help of a boy. We as the readers know what is really going on, but as a parent I can’t believe he is so willing to let her run straight into another guys arms.
That’s all I am saying.

Okay, so here is one of the times when I do like Jacob. In the chapter called Third Wheel, where Mike, Jacob and Bella go to the movie, Jacob makes a comment about how Bella doesn’t like music. I do have to give him credit for paying such close attention, he obviously does care about her a lot. But if that is true, he should have realized how much he was hurting her in Eclipse and not keep putting himself in the middle. That is when he starts to act like an immature little canine.
In chapter 10 I can not believe that Bella goes into the forest on her own, I mean with all the crap going on around her, seriously!!! And I can’t believe how relaxed she seems when she first sees Laurent. When I first read the book, I knew this could not be good as soon as he appeared. Even before she realized that he had burgundy eyes and before he said that he was still friends with Victoria, I knew that it was not going to end well and I was shocked that she didn’t seem to pick up on that.
The first paragraph to chapter 11 describes how scared Bella is after she realizes that Victoria and Laurent are after her. Honestly I don’t think I would have been able to sleep. I would have been paralyzed.
Then when she runs into Quil on her way out to see Jacob, that made me feel so bad for him. I can’t imagine how it would feel to be afraid of turning into something and you don’t even know what it is.
When Bella does confront Jacob about him ignoring her, Edward’s voice comes back. And that is one of the moments when I was so sure that she really was hearing Edward. I mean, she didn’t know that he was a werewolf so she wouldn’t know that she was in danger. She could maybe sense that he was really worked up and he needed to calm down, but she wouldn’t have really thought she was in true danger. So it had to be him, near by, protecting her from a far…right?
At the end of chapter 11, Charlie sticks up for Bella to Billy. It was just nice to hear (I mean read).
I didn’t really have any comments about chapter 12 but hey, only 83 more pages….

I finally finished reading the last 12 chapters to New Moon. So here are my thoughts:
First of all I love the line when Bella tells Jacob about some of the vampires having special powers and he says that he thought that was a myth…her response:
“Is anything just a myth anymore?” One of these days I’m going to put that on a t-shirt
Now here is a question I have about werewolves, what is it exactly that decides what hair color they will have when they turn? And if the length of the hair is affected by how long they have it as humans, then, since Jacob’s hair is black normally and then red when he turns, if he dyed his hair blue, when he turned would it be purple? That might be a rhetorical question, just something to think about…ponder if you will.
I thought is was really surprising when Jacob turned in front of Bella. Edward would have never allowed that. I CAN believe that Jacob wouldn’t think twice before taking such a risk, but at the same time I can’t believe it!!!
I feel bad for Mike when he says that girls are cruel. But what I don’t understand is why are all of these guys so into Bella anyway. I mean I get why Edward is, and I get that her and Jacob have some “history” and everything, but Mike too? He has no history with Bella and she has been acting crazy for months, how can he still be acting so desperate for her?
Now when Bella jumps off the cliff and is pulled to shore, then she looks back and sees the fire on the ocean. The first time I read this book I had no idea what the hell she was talking about. I mean every chance she gets she mentions how Victoria’s hair was like fire, but it just never clicked. When she saw the fire I thought, “oh that is strange” but that was it. And she kept remembering it and thinking about it and I just kept think “why is that so important to her” I was completely oblivious. Which is funny now because if you look at the page where she sees the fire, then look directly on the next page, that is where Jacob says that Victoria had gone into the water. I mean it is literally in the same place on the page across from where she sees the fire. Weird huh, how could I be so clueless?
FINALLY PAGE 382!!!!!!
What is funny is that I will forever have that page number ingrained in my mind as the page where the vampires come back. Remember that friend, Tera, that I work with. And when she was reading Twilight and getting frustrated that Edward wasn’t being nice to Bella in the beginning of the book. And I kept saying “just get to chapter 8, just make it to chapter 8” well her reaction to the beginning of Twilight was NOTHING compared to those 251 pages of New Moon, with no vampires! So I was constantly saying to her “382 Tera, 382” I mean she literally read like half a chapter per day because she just didn’t care anymore. She had no interest in Jacob AT ALL! So that is how I knew instantly that it was only 251 pages until the vampires came back and Jacob was forced into a backseat!
Here is a little fun fact about me. I hate movies like Romeo and Juliet, or Titanic! Movies where tragedy strikes but it could have all been avoided if this had happened, or if that had happened. I understand that to create conflict to then lead up to the climax, that some mishaps have to happen along the way but when things just keep happening, it just pisses me off. So at this point in the book I start to get really irritated. If Rosalie had kept her mouth shut, or if Alice had called when she found out that Bella was a live, if Jacob hadn’t taken the liberties to answer Bella’s phone instead of allowing her to do it, if Edward had asked to speak to Bella and not just Charlie (I mean as soon as she said hello and he knew she was alive he could have hung up if he was trying to not take back his promise of leaving her alone) if…if…if….if…if, I hate that part of stories I really do!
For some reason I think it is really sweet when Edward assumes he is dead when he sees Bella, but when she thinks she is dead when they get home I think it is annoying. I don’t have any idea as to why , I just roll my eyes at that part.
I loved the whole part when they were in Volterra, meeting the Volturi, reading about their powers, being introduced to their city. I thought that was the most exciting part of the book, but no one else I have talked to about it seemed to have taken much notice. Oh, but the part when the tourists come in, oh that kills me. Especially the women with the Rosary. The way she is holding it and getting panicked because she knows something isn’t right, and she is trying to talk to someone and get help but no one understands her. Oh that kills me!!!
I absolutely hate the way Bella talks to Charlie at the end of the book. I am a daddy’s girl through and through and can not stand for her to be so disrespectful. I mean one of his best friends dies, and she just takes off while he is at the funeral, doesn’t call him to say she is okay, barely left a note, comes home hardly able to walk, in the arms of the guy that left her like a zombie for months, then sleeps for 14 hours and then she is going to start laying down the ultimatums by threatening to move out!!! That whole part, as much as I can emphasize with her and the fact that I know the whole story, that part stills makes me so mad at Bella. I really just hate her in that moment.
And then to follow all of that up with the whole confrontation with Jacob at the end. With everything that she had just done, I could never really understand why adding on the motorcycles was such a big deal. But when Jacob crumples his face and she makes some lame ass vow about wanting to see him smile again, UGH I could just slap her! I mean seriously just let it go!!! It is not your job to fix him, and just because you feel guilty it is still NOT your responsibility!!