Steve W read and liked Denys L.H.'s review of New Moon (Twilight, #2):

"You may have heard me rant about the previous novel Twilight. I decided to read the sequel, just to see if it will get better.

Boy, was I wrong.

First off, we began with Bella Swan bitching about how old she's getting, because E...more You may have heard me rant about the previous novel Twilight. I decided to read the sequel, just to see if it will get better.

Boy, was I wrong.

First off, we began with Bella Swan bitching about how old she's getting, because Edward stays 17 forever, and since her birthday is coming up, she'll be one year older than her perfect lover. Um... older than him? Looks-wise, yes, but these dumbasses don't realize is that he's 100 YEARS OLDER THAN HER! WHAT THE HELL IS HE EVEN DOING IN HIGH SCHOOL IN THE FIRST PLACE? What really makes me annoyed with this couple was the fact they were comparing their relationship with Romeo and Juliet. It's nowhere even close to that because you two have no reason for loving each other!

Anyways, they have a party and things get a little out of control when Bella cuts herself (unintentionally) and Jasper can't control his vampire needs. Edward realizes he needs to protect Bella, and in order to do that, he must go away with his family. In order to pull an irritating fan girlfriend off your back is to hurt them really badly. And that's what he does.

Bella decides that without Edward, she has no reason to live anymore, even though she unexplainably can hear him inside her mind. What a baby. Luckily, Jacob saves her from attempted suicide as I'm guessing, and starts hanging out with her. At this point in the story, I'm starting to hate Jacob a little less and begun to eventually like him, because he's more of an original character than Edward. He makes mistakes, unlike Edward. He has more of a potential and realistic relationship with Bella. To top it all off, he's a werewolf and vampires so happen to be his worst enemy.

However, things start to get more complicated in the story. When Bella figured out Edward was going to Italy to ask this vampire family to kill him because he thought Bella is dead from some misinterpretation. Being the piss off as she is, she immediately pushes Jacob aside and her developing feelings and travels to Italy to stop Edward. In the end, they're together. They don't need anyone else, only each other to survive. Fucking lunatics.

I hate Edward now. He's just too unoriginal for me. Fan girls (including Bella) only love him because he's the hottest thing since ipods. They love an image of their boy dreams, but they hate the character that's actually more human than Edward, the sex god? What's the world coming to these days? I swear Jacob needs to get out of that retarded novel before Stephanie Meyer comes up with a way to make everyone have a reason to hate him. Good job, babe, good job.(less) "

Steve W read and liked Sarah Keliher's review of New Moon (Twilight, #2):

"First of all, just so you know where I'm coming from, you should know that this is not the worst novel I've ever read. In fact, I don't think the installments of the Twilight series can even be called novels. They're barely books. It's as if aliens h...more First of all, just so you know where I'm coming from, you should know that this is not the worst novel I've ever read. In fact, I don't think the installments of the Twilight series can even be called novels. They're barely books. It's as if aliens had come to Earth and constructed a shoddy simulacrum of a book, based on an imperfectly understood idea of what a Book is like.
A Book should come out in hardcover, and so the Twilight novels appeared, though with cheap, feather-light boards that make them feel insubstantial, like styrofoam models. A Book should have a certain number of pages, and so the texts of Twilight are strained and stretched to cover the requisite amount, though the result - page after page of mostly margin, with wide spaces between lines and huge black typeface - results in an impression of a desolate wasteland, like small human tracks across the face of a glacier. I even gave some thought to the relationship between the format and the plot: as if the typeface, like our hero, was reluctant to sully the virgin whiteness of the paper.
I use the word 'hero' with some misgivings. There are no actual characters, only sketchy representations of such. Our heroine is clumsy, and in love with a cipher - we know he is perfect and brilliant, because she tells us so, but because there is no dialogue in addition to the repetition of these facts, we don't get to see why she'd think so. We learn little more than this, but it doesn't matter - the plot is pulled along by Events and Life Threatening Fights and Declarations of True Love, because that's what happens in Books. The characters drift through, unchangeable, ill-defined, unsympathetic, like icons.
Some morals are imparted: the vampires talk about their souls and heaven, there is no sex before marriage, everyone is monogamous, and hope is held out that the Cullens will be able to bring their Good News about redemption to save the souls of the other vampires. We also learn about the noble savages of the northwest coast, who step in with some tribal wisdom at key points in the narrative.
Of course they're wildly popular. It's the perfect book series for our times: prudish and reactionary, valuing form over substance. It's more of a long text message than a novel, really, and maybe that's where the appeal lies.

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