This long, emotional journey started with sixth grade Saleena and ends–hopefully forever–with college bound Saleena. I am ready to face this new chapter of my life…however, these last few chapters of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight is a different story. But, much like Ned Stark from the much better series, A Song of Ice and Fire, I am bound by my honor. I started this book blog, and I will end it.

Summary:
Chapter 22, “Hide-and-Seek” gave me traumatic flashbacks to a few months ago, when I read this very title, shut the book firmly and shoved it away from me as fast as humanly possible. It begins back at the hotel with the incompetent Alice and Jasper. Bella has just made her decision to feed herself to James, so Alice had a vision of Bella dying, but she keeps it to herself. Hopefully, she says nothing and allows nature to take its course.
The three leave the hotel to meet Edward at the airport; using the crowd to her advantage, Bella escapes. Once she leaves the airport, Bella goes to her old house, speaks with her friend James for a moment, then agrees to meet up at the ballet studio nearby. When she arrives at the ballet studio, she realizes that James is a dirty thief! As if killing Bella wasn’t enough, he stole her family’s home movies and used her mother’s recording to trick her. However, her mom is completely safe in Florida and Bella is trapped with a big bad vampire!
James then gloats about how great he is and says that hunting Bella wasn’t fun as he thought it would be. She is used to being a disappointment, so his words do not hurt her feelings. He then takes out a camcorder to record Bella’s death so that Edward can play it at her funeral. Bella tries to escape, but fails epically.
Chapter 23 is called “The Angel.” Drawing back on the thousands and thousands of words devoted to the flip of Edward’s bronze hair and chiseled jaw, I wonder who is going to make an appearance. Bella thinks she is dead and hears “an angel’s voice,” which everyone knows is Edward. He seems pretty upset at what has happened.
The whole gang is there, and Bella screams that she is being burned. That’s when they realize that James bit her and the venom is going to turn her into a vampire. This is great news; now Edward and Bella can be together forever and the series can end! Right?
Do you even need me to answer that question?
Carlisle says that they can just suck the venom out, and who is going to do it? The angel with the chiseled jaw.

The last chapter of the book is called “An Impasse.” Bella wakes up in the hospital and Edward is there. They chat for a little about how James is now dead, may he rest in pieces, and how Bella tripped down the stairs and fell through a window. Or at least, that’s what her parents think.
Bella’s mother comes into the room and says that Bella’s wish came true and now she can go home to Jacksonville! But no, Bella bases her life choices on a boy she barely knows and says she wants to stay in Forks. It’s not like she almost died being with Edward or anything….oh wait.

Edward has the right idea and hints at her that he is bad news, and she goes all “No, don’t leave me, I don’t care about my life, I just care about your chiseled jaw.” He agrees. Bella starts asking the hard questions that we’re all wondering: why did he suck the venom out instead of allowing her to become a vampire? The answers Edward provides is unsatisfactory and unpleasant and I’d rather not repeat them; to sum it up, Meyer wanted to make money from three unnecessary books and five even more unnecessary movies.
The epilogue is about Edward taking Bella to prom. He does not turn her into a vampire at the end.
 
Commentary:
James is my favorite character, and I’m still mourning his unfortunate death. If anything, the Cullens are murderers, by vampire standards. Do you see vegetarians killing every person who walks into a McDonalds and asks for chicken nuggets? No, so why are you going to murder James? He just wants some food, and honestly, Bella is annoying.
No, in all seriousness, James really is my favorite character. He is funny, he says the things that we’re all thinking, and he nearly kills Bella. Truth be told, I chortled throughout the entire scene.
Don’t even get me started on the venom thing. I’ve read the series about eight times in my sad existence, and there are so many bad things that could have easily been avoided if Bella became a vampire in the first book. In the end, Bella turns into a vampire anyway. However, she encounters thirsty Jaspers, equally thirsty Jacob Blacks, suicidal Edwards, creepy Italian vampire cults, newborn vampire armies, salty redheads, unnecessary love triangles, cringey reproducing decisions, and borderline pedophiliac relationships before she sinks her teeth into the immortal life. All of that, and much more, would not have even happened if Edward continued being selfish and allowed Bella to turn.
 
Final Thoughts:
Wow, I do not think I have ever been so excited for a book to end. Back when I started this book blog, I considered doing a New Moon Reread Challenge, since I thought I would get through this one quite easily. However, even if I did finish in time, I fear my blogs would have the same formula: Bella being stupid, Edward being controlling, Meyer being a bad writer. There’s only so many variations of the word “stupid,” and it appears I’ve used them all.
While I found this challenge very torturous, at times it was therapeutic. I found that all my real-life frustrations could be channeled into words of biting sarcasm and poorly hidden hatred for Twilight and everything it stands for. However, it may not have the same effect for you; if you do not enjoy mental–and sometimes physical–pain, I do not recommend this book. If you do not enjoy wasting your time on half-witted, angsty teenage girl descriptions of an attractive teenage-looking boy, I do not recommend this book. If you do not enjoy adverb-ridden text, unrealistic first person word-choice, and phrases that may or may not be actual English, I do not recommend this book.
If you do, however, enjoy the aforementioned subjects, I advise you to seek medical attention, for there may be something dangerously wrong with you.
 

RIP James

N/A-2005