I did. These books are predictable.

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As the Volturi talk, Bella keeps her shield up. Jane and Alec attempt to incapacitate the Cullens and their allies, to keep them from running away, but it’s to no avail against Bella’s shield. When the Volturi break off, Aro says that, regardless of the decision, it doesn’t need to come to violence and it would be a shame for anyone to die. This prompts exclamations of disbelief from the Cullens’ side. I’d just like to remind you all one more time that the only evidence of the Volturi wanting

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Bella finally decides to look into J. Jenks. She drives Jacob and Nessie over to Charlie’s, telling Edward that she wants to give Charlie a chance to visit Nessie so she can use the away time to head to Seattle. Why she can’t just say, “I need to go to Seattle. Alice left a message that she only wanted me to see. I want to tell you but I don’t think I should. Sorry.”, I don’t know. Jacob’s still not happy with the vampires, particularly the Romanians. Nessie, however, is fascinated with them,

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Showing fantastic proactivity, the Cullens wait for Alice to return. For hours. They don’t even send someone out to check up on her. What do Bella and Edward do during this? Take a wild guess.

We’d stared at each other all night, staring at what neither of us could live through losing: the other.

CM + 1

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Bella gets a new house for her birthday and it’s purty.

That’s it.

I FUCKING HATE THIS BOOK.

Well, okay. That’s not completely it. It does have one of the better Alice moments, where she and Edward have both gotten Bella gifts and each wants to give theirs first:

“I know — I’ll play you for it,” Alice suggested. “Rock, paper, scissors.”

Jasper chuckled and Edward sighed.

“Why don’t you just tell me who wins?” Edward said wryly.

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Bella has another dream about the immortal child, again with the Volturi coming for him, only this time she feels powerful and wants to protect him. Why? ’Cause he’s purty? Didn’t you hear about all the destruction they could cause? The Volturi are trying to keep vampires secret and keep humans from hunting them down. It’s not like they’re stomping around, going, “No fun allowed!” It’s like they’re trying to keep you from skating somewhere because that somewhere is a minefield. When she wakes

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You know things are even worse when you feel tired for complaining about all the padding.

Jacob arrives at the Cullens’ and finds a fresh set of clothes waiting for him. As he’d torn his last set changing when he left the house last chapter, he’s grateful. He re-enters the living room and finds that it’s back to mostly normal, with no hospital bed or anything. Bella hears Jacob enter and her face lights up.

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What do I look like? A writer? You need some good prose? You need some good characters? TOO BAD. They’re mine. You’re not getting anything.

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Waiting for the damn book to end already. Notice something different about the chapter title? For the next ten or so chapters, the book’s narrated by Jacob instead of Bella. And if he’s anything like he was at the end of Eclipse, this is going to be painful. VERY. VERY. PAINFUL.

There’s a “preface” for this section, too. This is it, in its entirety:

Life sucks, and then you die.

Yeah, I should be so lucky.

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So. Last book. Here we go.

Clinginess Meter: 0

I hate hate hate hate hate these prefaces. How not to do prologues. Skipping.

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The moment Bella wakes up, she realizes she can everything much more clearly than she could as a human. Everything’s sharply-defined and she can notice things that were too small before. It’s an interesting idea, but like many interesting ideas in this series, it’s botched. Like in this description:

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Good thing I’ve got a strong Bullshit Sensor (or so I hope…).

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The hunt begins with a halfway-decent character scene where Bella’s nervous about jumping out the second-story window even though she knows she’s indestructible now. But then it’s ruined when she tries it and does it perfectly.

“That was quite graceful — even for a vampire.”

BECAUSE WE CAN’T INCONVENIENCE OUR PROTAGONIST. NO. SIR.

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As Bella and Edward run back to the house, she asks him to tell her about (bleelalgh) Renesmee. It’s the boringness of perfection: she’s wonderful, she’s about a half-and-half split between a vampire and a human, she sleeps soundly, she prefers to drink blood although she can eat human food, and she communicates effectively even though she doesn’t speak yet. Well. Isn’t that convenient. However, Edward’s frustrated over Jacob imprinting on (ghghghgh) Renesmee, but he manages to hide that fact

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When Bella gets home, she says to Edward that she went Christmas shopping for Nessie and got her a little something: a rully purty necklace. Edward approves of it. She wants to practice fighting with Emmett some more, but Edward says that’ll have to wait until tomorrow. Why, I don’t know. He doesn’t give a single reason. Bella accepts it because I don’t know. Girl, can’t you have any initiative? Bella recognizes that, in order for Nessie to have a chance to run away at all, the Cullens

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It’s time for Bella to meet Jenks again, to pick up her papers. She drives back to Seattle, reminiscing that, since she didn’t know what she was doing, she had to go through the “obviously up to no good route” to know what to ask for. I guess Alice couldn’t have written “J. Jenks — forger” in her note because… Oh, look, a Baltimore oriole! Wow they’re orange.

She meets Jenks at a restaurant and we get more evidence of his underutilization:

“Have you known Jasper long?”

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This must set some kind of record. These are the very first sentences in the chapter:

“I miss you already.”

“I don’t need to leave. I can stay…”

Four words in, and CM + 1. Wow. Even by this series’ standards, wow.

It’s the night before the wedding, and our resident codependent couple is in the middle of a kissing session. Quite a clingy one, too:

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Bella wakes up and is, for some reason, annoyed with herself for having that dream about the immortal child, as if she could control what she dreams. After breakfast, she and Charlie get ready, and Alice arrives to help them put the finishing touches on their clothes and make them look presentable. There’s an interesting bit where Alice mentions that, to keep the tradition of the groom not seeing the bride’s dress before the wedding, she’s been very careful to not think about the dress when

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These four books are at the very top of my Things-I-Never-Want-to-Read-Again List.

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Most of this chapter is a sort of montage/summary of the first three months of Bella’s vampirization. It’s perfect, of course. She claims to take mythology a lot more seriously, which could be interesting, but it’s only so she can make a too-long metaphor about the Fates’ loom and the color of the threads of herself, her family, and her friends. Nessie keeps growing quickly and she’s adorable without having any character. Alice and Rosalie make a scrapbook of her growth to create the

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