"Once you cared about a person, it was impossible to be logical about them anymore."
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS
When I made the decision to read Twilight two years ago, I didn’t predict that one book would turn into a seven-part series in which I criticise not only every Twilight book, but also the entire Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. And yet, here I am, introducing my third instalment in that series: my review of New Moon, book two in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga, and I’m happy to report that it manages to be even worse than Twilight, which really is an achievement in itself.
A lot of the problems I have with Twilight continue in New Moon: the plot is empty until the last quarter, the book takes itself far too seriously, Bella continues to be so clumsy that she has to go to the emergency room five times a week, yadda yadda, you get the picture. It’s what I’m gradually coming to expect from Stephenie Meyer, so I’m no longer surprised by it. However, Twilight and New Moon have one major difference between them: in New Moon, Edward leaves, and Jacob Black fills his place.
Having general access to an internet connection, I knew that the Bella-Edward-Jacob love triangle was coming. What I wasn’t expecting, however, was for Edward to literally up and leave in New Moon. He departs on page 74, and doesn’t return for another 300 pages. Hallelujah! Given that Edward is one of my least favourite characters to have ever been written, I was pretty pleased with this development.
And then Jacob happened.
Where do I begin with Jacob Black? He is so awful that he made me miss Edward. He is so annoying and corny and douchey that it made me want to rip my hair out. He’s supposed to be this charming, funny guy, someone who’s easy to be around, someone who can give Bella a normal life, someone whose affections for Bella will challenge her unconditional love for Edward and make her question whether or not Edward is worth it. And he does do all these things. Meyer makes it clear in Twilight that Jacob has the hots for Bella, so it makes sense that with Edward temporarily out of the picture, Jacob starts putting the moves on Bella. It still weirds me out that she’s a legal adult and he’s only just 16, but the age of consent in Washington state is 16, so whatever, it’s not weird, he’s still technically a child and she’s still technically an adult but whatever it’s cool I’m not grossed out at all. The thing that really disturbs me about Jacob’s interest in Bella – and yes, of course there’s about to be a feminist angle, what else did you expect? — is the fact that he never gives up.
There’s something to be said about persistence in romance. Under the right circumstances, the whole asking-them-out-fifty-times-in-a-row-until-they-finally-agree thing can be perceived as romantic; it can make a person feel really special. Under the wrong circumstances, though, it’s annoying, frustrating, stressful, and even scary. To quote How I Met Your Mother, "if both people are into each other, then a big romantic gesture works, but if one person isn't into the other, the same gesture comes off serial-killer crazy". I don’t think Meyer was aiming for serial-killer crazy when she wrote Jacob Black, but he’s certainly closer to the creepier end of the spectrum. A third of the way through the book, he tags along to a movie with Bella and her friend Mike, another boy who is inexplicably in love with Bella in spite of her complete lack of personality. And then this happens:
I joined [Jacob] with a sigh. He looked like he was thinking about blurring more lines. Sure enough, as soon as I sat down, he shifted over to put his arm around my shoulders.
“Jake,” I protested, leaning away. He dropped his arm, not looking bothered by the minor rejection. He reached out and took my hand firmly, wrapping his other hand around my wrist when I tried to pull away again (p.186).
She doesn’t want him getting handsy with her and tells him to stop, so he responds by continuing to do it anyway, and then using his superior strength to overpower her when she tries to move away. And I haven’t even gotten to the worst of it yet. Jacob speaks first:
“You like me, right?”
“You know I do.”
“Better than any of the other guys you know?”
“Better than the girls, too,” I pointed out.
“But that’s all,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” I whispered.
He grinned down at me. “That’s okay, you know. As long as you like me the best [...] I’m prepared to be annoyingly persistent” (p.187).
Bella has consistently implied that she isn’t interested in Jacob romantically, that she has never seen him as anything more than a friend, and, what’s more, that she is still in love with someone else. Jacob knows all of this, but he refuses to accept it. He is willing to take no for an answer in the short term because he believes that if he keeps pestering her, he will eventually wear her down until she agrees to date him. My least favourite line during this exchange is below:
“But don’t get mad at me for hanging around, okay? Because I’m not giving up. I’ve got loads of time” (p.187).
That’s Jacob, proving that he is too dense to take a hint and that he doesn’t care about Bella’s boundaries or what she feels and wants. He is perfectly content to wait until she is so fed up with him fawning over her that she just caves in. So perhaps persistence, in some situations, is romantic, but in Jacob’s, it really is not. All he’s demonstrating is that he doesn’t actually care about Bella at all. He sees her as an object, a prize to be won.
The best part of having finished New Moon, apart from having finally exited the ninth circle of hell and being free from the crucible of Jacob’s weird, old-man sense of humour, is the fact that I have no idea what to expect from Eclipse. I’ve never read it, I’ve never seen the movie; I don’t have even a vague sense of what the plot might look like, because I tipped every moment of New Moon out of my head the second I closed the final page. I’m heading into uncharted territory, and it thrills me. If New Moon was so terrible that it somehow made me Team Edward, what sort of apocalypse is Eclipse going to bring?
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