New Moon

Bella always knew Edward was too good to be true, and her worst fears come to fruition when he tells her that he is leaving Forks—and he doesn’t want her to come with him. He promises it will be “like he never existed.” But the hold he has on her heart isn’t something that fades with time. As the months stretch out without Edward, Bella succumbs to a mind-numbing depression where time passes, but she doesn’t really live.

Bella doesn’t expect things will ever change until she runs into Jacob, an old friend from the nearby reservation. Jacob becomes her best friend. He is so warm and kind that she begins to think of Jacob as her own personal sun, burning away the dark clouds that have surrounded Bella for so long. Bella knows that Jacob longs for their relationship to move forward, but is her damaged heart even capable of that kind of healing? To make matters worse, there’s a cult on the reservation that’s sucking in many of the teenage boys. When Jacob suddenly vanished from her life and starts hanging around with the very people he had been scared of before, Bella decides she has to help her friend break free. But the bonds that tie Jacob may be deeper and more permanent than Bella could possibly imagine.

In New Moon, Bella struggles to move on after losing her one true love. At first, she wallows in depression, trying to put on a brave face for the world outside, but eventually she learns that she isn’t fooling anyone. Once Jacob enters her life, she begins to heal, but she also clings to the memory of Edward. Her inability to let go of the past prevents her from moving forward as she grapples with questions such as, is it possible to have more than one love in one lifetime? And is it right to give herself to Jacob, when a part of her still mourns for Edward?

The second installment of the Twilight series takes a shocking turn, but it will not disappoint. Readers need not worry that Edward’s absence for most of the novel will detract from its entertainment factor. Bella’s trauma over the loss of Edward, his family, and her life as a vampire keeps that storyline very much alive, as does the reappearance of an old enemy. Jacob, his father Billy, and Jacob’s friends on the reservation breathe life into the story, bringing new, lovable characters into the mix. These characters are well-developed, and Jacob will steal the heart of all but the strongest Edward supporters. The end of New Moon comes in an exhilarating rush that will either leave readers rejoicing or will break their hearts. Either way, make sure to have the next book, Eclipse, nearby!

Sexual Content

• Bella and Edward kiss several times. “He leaned closer and pressed his icy lips against mine . . . His mouth lingered on mine, cold and smooth and gentle, until I wrapped my arms around his neck and threw myself into the kiss with a little too much enthusiasm.” Another time, “he sighed, and leaned down to touch his lips to mine. I reached up on my toes to make the kiss last longer when he pulled away.”
• While in bed, Edward and Bella make out. “The kiss began much the same as usual . . . And then something seemed to change. Suddenly his lips became much more urgent, his free hand twisted into my hair and held my face securely to his . . . His body was cold through the thin quilt, but I crushed myself against him eagerly.”

Violence

• Bella gets pushed into a table and falls into a pile of broken crystal. “Only now did I feel the searing, stinging pain…Dazed and disoriented, I looked up from the bright red blood pulsing out of my arm.”
• When Jacob tells Bella that he helped kill “the bloodsucker who was going to kill you,” he says, “I don’t count that towards the whole murder thing . . . Vampires don’t count as people.”
• Bella gets injured several times while learning to ride a motorcycle.

Drugs and Alcohol

• None

Language

• Hell is used several times. Once, Bell says, “How the hell did Mike Newton end up in this conversation?”
• Crap is used several times. Bella says, “I did drown. Crap, crap, crap! This is gonna kill Charlie.”
• Pissed off and damn are used a few times. While drowning, Bella hears Edward’s voice yell, “Damn it, Bella, keep fighting.”

Supernatural

• Edward and his family are vampires, though they choose to survive on animal blood rather than human blood. They are super strong, fast, and several of them have special abilities like Edward’s ability to hear peoples’ thoughts.
• Jacob and his friends can transform into giant wolves. “With another sharp tearing sound, Jacob exploded, too. He burst out of his skin—one second it was Jacob diving into the air, and then it was the gigantic, russet brown wolf—so enormous that I couldn’t make sense of its mass somehow fitting inside Jacob.”

Spiritual Content

• Carlisle says, “Never, in the nearly four hundred years now since I was born, have I ever seen anything to make me doubt whether God exists in some form or the other.” Meanwhile, Edward thinks “God and heaven exist . . . and so does hell. But he doesn’t believe there is an afterlife” for vampires. “You see, he thinks we’ve lost our souls.”
• When Jacob agrees to help Bella, she thinks, “Jacob was a gift from the gods.”
• When Edward sees Bella, who he thinks has died, he thinks he is dead also. “Maybe this is hell. I don’t care.”

by Morgan Lynn