#5 - New Moon by Stephanie Meyer

I'm so behind on my blog posts, but don't worry I have several new books to report on.

I just finished New Moon, the second installment in Stephanie Meyer's Twilight book series. I was on a waiting list of 64 people at the library for this book but luckily I got it about two weeks after I signed up. Maybe the list went so quickly because it's one of those can't-put-it-down books.

While I agree with my little sister (who's probably in more of the target-Twilight audience at 16) that it's not as good as the first book, I still loved it so much that I will probably have to add a copy to my permanent collection once I decide to start spending money on books again.

The story starts off immediately where Twilight left off. Bella is happy in love with Edward, her vampire boyfriend. Then he has to leave town and Bella is devastated. She starts doing reckless things because it's only then that she feels close to him. When I read that this book was going to involve werewolves I kind of rolled my eyes, but it actually works.

I know a lot of screaming teens aren't as jazzed for the second Twilight movie (I still have yet to see the first) because it doesn't feature too much of the hunky vampire star. From a literary perspective, I kind of liked lonely Bella more than OMG-so-in-love-with-my-vampire Bella. There's only so much I want to read about teen romance these days. And I really liked the werewolves and hope they will pop up in the later books of the series.

Running to the library to drop off New Moon and sign up for Eclipse. Thank you Stephanie Meyer, I'm hooked on another series!

Read: 608 pages

Saved: $10.99

#4 - Off Season by Anne Rivers Siddons

$17 bucks I didn't throw in the garbage by buying "Off Season" by Anne Rivers Siddons. Quite seriously the worst book I have read in a long time and part of the reason why I'm doing so poorly at my 109 books in 2009 challenge thus far. Kept putting this one down but finally finished it out of lack of other new reading material and curiosity about how it ended. Which it did with a real stupid "twist" at the end which I'm sure left many readers saying "ohmigod" but left me with just a WTF feeling.

The reason why I picked it was the book jacket made it seem like the book was about a woman who loses her husband and then travels literally and figuratively back to the place where she spent her idyllic summers of her youth where she experienced an earlier tragedy. Kind of true. Except throw in her mother's long drawn out cancer death that we don't actually feel too bad about because she was apparently a useless slut, her brother abandoning the family which is seemingly important for one chapter and then never mentioned again, a very creepy father/daughter relationship.

By the time we meet the husband he's dead two pages later and I really could care less. The last fifty pages were excruciatingly dull with old lady talking to her cat and dead husband. Yawn. I will be more careful with my next selection!

Read: 368 pages
Saved: $16.49 (on sale)