A review by emilyhays
Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer

3.0

Damn, Emily below really had some thoughts. Girl, it is okay to like things. Let's change it up to a 3/5.



I have many thoughts on this one. I re-read it several times as a teenager, but this is my first time reading it as an adult and oh man, it was bad. I'm sure you already knew that, though. Also I will say I did skip some stuff because I really have read it MANY times before and couldn't bare to make myself re-read some parts at a leisurely pace. 
Let's start with manipulation. I mean, we know that Edward really manipulates her... I mean, he literally takes the battery out of her car so she can't go see Jacob. It's a bit much. If my partner ever did that, he'd be kicked to the curb. Jacob also manipulates Bella... a lot. He makes her feel bad for putting him in the friend-zone, he says the most awful things. He pretends he's angry so she'll kiss him. Gross. Bella manipulates Edward a bit too. Not quite to the same extent, but jesus christ this is the perfect example of an unhealthy relationship. Not to mention the last chapter of the novel, in which Edward is like 'nah, never mind, I don't want to get married' and tries to do the do with her IN THE MEADOW, and she tries to get him to stop and for a hot minute he WON'T. Because he's actually way stronger than her (cause he's a vampire) and she can't stop him from kissing her. Gross.
Next, this book has such strong religious undertones. And maybe it's my newly formed english-major brain, but omigod so many religious undertones. I didn't grow u super religious so I'm not sure if the specific plot of Eclipse parallels any particular stories (if you do know, please leave me a comment, I'd love to know!). But there's that whole scene where Bella is trying to convince Edward that they should do the do, and he's all worried about her virtue. Yeah, we know that from watching the movie. But he also talks about like the 7 deadly sins, and the 10 commandments and it was so weird. I've read somewhere that Meyer is Mormon and I don't know if that's true. But I also know that she's an extremely distant cousin of mine (weird, eh?!) and it wouldn't surprise me if she is super religious. I mean, you do you, but man it felt like I was reading a novel that supposed to teach you how vampires are condemned or something. 
And, of course, the writing was... not good. This book is over 600 pages and could easily have been edited down to 400ish. Maybe less. So many sentences had extra words, characters rambled on for literal PARAGRAPHS... not just Bella in her mind (though that was a lot too), I'm talking DIALOGUE going on for PARAGRAPHS (excluding Jasper and Rosalie's stories). It's such baseline writing. To be fair, it might not be something you would notice as a 13 year-old (though maybe you did, but I surely didn't!), but man, it was not good. 
Suffice to say I am entirely disappointed in this book. It was my favourite back in my Twi-hard days, but now I would easily argue the first book is better than this one. I'm still giving it a 2/5 and I think it's just because the 13 year-old inside me would be pissed if I gave it 1/5.