Breaking Dawn

Friday night, August 1st, Amanda, Karen and I joined the throngs of teenagers waiting for the midnight release of Breaking Dawn. Amanda and I had pre-ordered our books from the Barnes and Noble in Orem, and she had gone to B&N earlier that day (I was still in Pittsburgh and Karen was still in Missouri) to get a wristband to mark our place in line. By the time she got to B&N – which was noon, still plenty early, we were assigned to group J. When we arrived at 11:30 p.m., it was already pandemonium. Well, pandemonium might be an exaggeration, but holy crap. It was worse than the release party for Eclipse (the 3rd book in the Stephenie Meyer series). There were kids in prom dresses (from the book), in homemade T-shirts that said things like “Team Edward,” “I ‘heart’ Edward,” “Wolves are hot,” etc. in puffy paint. After a few minutes (and a few pictures, thanks to Amanda) we determined that it might be faster if we drove down the hill to WalMart. I’m so proud of Karen, who overcame her “I-never-go-to-WalMart” attitude in order to save precious time.





Even at WalMart, we were behind about 200 people in line, but we had our books and were out of the store by 12:25 a.m. Amanda drove us by B&N just to see what was going on, and the line was still incredible. Newspapers reported that the B&N in Orem had more reservations than any other B&N nationwide.

Karen was worried about being so much older than any other person waiting in line, so I kept looking for “old people” so she wouldn’t feel so bad. There were quite a few.

I was quite disgusted when I went back to B&N Saturday morning to get a different book and I saw all the trash surrounding the store. Ugh, people are gross. I mean, seriously, have people never heard of picking up your trash? Yuck!


So, taking a little longer than Amanda, I finished the book Sunday morning. Although I really enjoyed most of it, I do have two problems with it:
1. The ending left WAY too much unresolved. From a book that was written to be “The End,” I still have a lot of unanswered questions. Although after a discussion with Laurenda, I do feel a little better about the ending.
AND probably the biggest problem
2. Way too much sexual content for the target audience. If I had a 13-year-old daughter, I wouldn’t want her reading this book. I read that Stephenie Meyer wanted to put a warning label on this book, but the publisher (or somebody) didn’t feel the need. Um, totally needed one. Although there was nothing explicit, there was plenty implied. Way too much heat and passion for kids with already raging hormones to read.

Also, the tone of this 4th book seemed soooo much different than the other three; it was almost like it was by a different author.

For the past several years (since 1999, probably), I’ve always had “the-next-book” to look forward to - Harry Potter, Twilight. Now that they’re both through, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. Any good series you can suggest? And no, Amanda, I’m not going to read Black Belt Patriotism : How to Reawaken America.