NGU Skyliner

Keisha Tinsley
Copy Editor

New Moon, book two of the Twilight series, continues with Bella’s story. The book begins with Bella at the Cullen’s home for her “surprise” birthday party, thrown by Alice Cullen.

Things turn sour when Bella gets a paper cut, and Jasper’s thirst for blood leads him to attack her. When Edward realizes that he is required to protect Bella all the time, he withdraws from the relationship.

Bella doesn’t know what to do with herself. Her depression becomes more than her dad, Charlie, can handle.

Finally, Bella gets close to Jacob Black. She sees Black everyday and soon realizes she can hear Edward’s voice as a result of an adrenaline rush. She continuously puts herself in danger to hear the hallucination that Edward’s voice brings.

Meanwhile, Jacob is forming his own identity. He is learning to cope with becoming a werewolf and continue to protect Bella.

At first he tries to keep his secret from Bella, afraid of what she would think of him. He eventually gives up and tells her as much as he can without betraying his pack.

Amid her thrill-seeking behavior, Bella decides to try cliff jumping without Jacob’s help. She jumps and is carried under by the strong undertow. Jacob rescues her.

Alice has a vision of Bella jumping off the cliff and immediately thinks she is killing herself. However, her vision does not show Jacob rescuing her. Alice tells Edward what she saw, and he is devastated.

Alice rushes to Forks to check on Charlie, and Edward calls. Jacob answers and informs Edward that Charlie is on his way to the funeral, but Jacob did not share that it was another man in town’s funeral. Desperate, Edward plans a trip to Italy to see the Volturi, the peace-keeping, law-abiding vampires that would be able to kill him.

Alice and Bella immediately take off to Italy to stop Edward. Upon their arrival, they learn that his plan was to step out into sunlight and reveal his sparkling skin. The Volturi would have no choice but to kill him because he had put their world in danger by revealing who they truly were.

Bella reaches him just in time, but the group is taken by the Volturi underground. Before leaving Italy, Edward is given an ultimatum: Bella has to be killed or be turned into a vampire. A human is not allowed to know about the existence of vampires.

I enjoyed getting to know Jacob’s character a lot more, as opposed to the little family friend that no one knows about. We learn much more about Jacob Black and Edward is not around for most of it.

I love Edward’s character, but Jacob is the friend that Bella needs. He steps into New Moon as the solid male influence in Bella’s world of uncertainty and depression. When Edward wasn’t there for her, he picked up the pieces and helped her through her depression.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, all the new friendships and development of Jacob Black’s character. It brought the story to a whole new level.

Next week’s book review: Eclipse.

Tags: Fall 2008, Vol. 108 Fall - Issue 1

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.