New Moon by Stephanie Meyer

I bought this last night, got home around 8:30 and headed to bed around 9 to start reading. I was finished by 3 am. Could NOT put it down.

New Moon picks up on Bella's birthday. She's not happy about turning a year "older" than Edward but agrees to go to a birthday party that Alice has planned for her out at the Cullen's house. She promises Edward that she'll "behave" (read: won't be grumpy and sarcastic) because this is the first real birthday the Cullen family has been able to celebrate for 70 some years and they're all excited.

Of course, being the klutzy Bella, while she is opening her presents she gets a paper cut. The family, reluctant "vegetarians" that they are, go nuts over the smell of just a little drop of blood. Uproar takes place and, in the end, the Cullen family decides to leave the tiny town of Forks. Edward breaks it off with Bella, believing that she'll be better off without him, stating that it's been fun but...yeah...and tells her "it'll be as if I were never here" and leaves her taking all memorabilia from their time together so she has nothing but her memories...

Bella spends the next few months in emotional withdrawal from everything she loves. She pulls away from everyone, her father, her mother who has flown up from Florida, her school friends. She finally begins to recover when she renews her friendship with Jacob Black, an American Indian living on the reservation outside of Forks.

Then, just as everything starts to come alive for Bella, Jacob gets sucked into a "cult" and begins to change.

The themes in the book might seem trite and over done but Ms. Meyer has once again taken the familiar and made them hauntingly new.

I ached for Bella as I read this book. I cried when Edward and the Cullen family left her. I wanted desperately to be there, to hold Bella while she cried, while she was having the never ending nightmares that stalked her through the months of her absolute desolation. The end of the book...again starting around the last 1/3...gave me hope, made me happy and sad again.

Once I finished this book, I cried. Not because it was over, although I did want it to continue forever, but because it was beautifully done. Hope was not in vain and the book continues to weave itself into my thoughts and even my dreams.

I'm giving this one 5 of 5 berries as well.