Previously: Bella made out with Jacob a little bit and it was the worst.
—
Kirsti: Bella’s face down on her sleeping bag. Edward strokes her knotty disgusting hair, and somehow she still knows that his hand is cold? (M: Like when you wash your hair with cold water. *cough*) Whatever. She says that she wants to die, and I really want her to die too. (A: Me three!) Although frankly, after the abomination that was the last chapter, I want EVERYONE to die. But sadly, Edward says he’ll never let that happen. Um. So he’s NOT going to let anyone turn her into a vampire? What’s the point of this goddamn series then?! (C: Torture?)
We’re saved from Bella telling Edward what happened between her and Jacob because of contrivance werewolf mindmeld and Edward’s magic powers. She expects him to, like, murder her face off for kissing Jacob, but he finds the whole thing funny. “And I thought I fought dirty,” he says. Then he tells her that he’s not mad at her (!!!!) because Jacob would have kissed her even if she hadn’t “fallen for it.”
I’m literally fighting the urge to throw this book onto the stove right now and just let it burn.
Marines: Right, right, the question was never IF Bella was going to get kissed but whether Bella would be tricked into liking her forced kiss…? I hate this book.
Catherine: I HATE this book. Not only did we have to read her getting sexually assaulted but now we have to read it being improperly handled? Fantastic. This is everything I want in a romance.
Annie: Hard pass. I vote we all throw these tomes into our ovens and watch them burn.
K: MOTION CARRIED.
He basically tells Bella that she’s the most gullible person on earth, and tells her that Jacob’s projecting a 3D IMAX sized replay for everyone to the point where “poor Seth was getting nauseated.” You and me both, Seth. Edward’s all “I know that you love Jacob because he put the pieces back together when I fucked you up and left town” and Bella tells him NOT TO BLAME HIMSELF.
I have run out of words. I just… this series is an abomination, it really is.
Bella wants him to be mad but Edward just gets all sad panda-y and says that he’s not going to make her choose between him and Jacob because he just wants her to be happy. I am going to need more alcohol if I’m going to deal with another nineteen pages of this bullshit. Hold on one sec.
Mari: Remember in the early days when we were like “lol Meyer is bad at punctuation lol.”
*sobs*
Catherine: Pass me that liquor. IDC even what it is.
Annie: You guys are cute. I’m just gonna poke my eyes out so I physically cannot read this anymore.
K: Don’t be silly, Annie. There’s still audiobooks! (Also, it’s pear cider in case anyone cares. And it is DELICIOUS.)
Okay. Let’s push on.
Bella tells him to stop being self-sacrificing and to fight for her instead. Essentially, she wants to bang in the mysteriously not fallen down tent:
“I don’t care that it’s cold here. I don’t care that I stink like a dog right now. Make me forget how awful I am. Make me forget him. Make me forget my own name. Fight back!”
I swear to God, you guys. After the horrificness that has been the last two chapters? This is the icing on the cake of bullshit.
Catherine: This is rapidly turning into another E.L. James situation where Meyer actually writes a pretty realistic sexual assault scene accidentally and then sells it as romantic.
K: YUP.
She kisses Edward and is all over him like a rash. But once again, premarital sex makes the baby Jesus cry and Edward tells her that it’s too cold and she smells (he literally tells her she smells. SWOON) and assures her that they WILL bang but he doesn’t want it to be about Jacob. Also, there’s a fight going on outside. (M: Is there REALLY?) (C: What’s that? There’s a plot to this?)
Bella freaks when she remembers the fight and then we’re treated to a recap of the fight via Edward via Seth. Awesome. It’s basically a page and a half of “LOL, we’re pwning these n00bs” until all of a sudden, Seth and Edward both freeze. Bella freaks that someone’s dead, but NOPE. Victoria didn’t fall for their shitty trap and is coming after them. (C: Yay!)
Bella’s just relieved it’s not the Volturi. Why? Because the Volturi would kill them both. But if it’s Victoria, Edward will survive. Girl. No. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. STOP.
Victoria and a big hulking blond teen boy walk into the clearing. Bella, suddenly, is a master strategist and has worked out that Victoria’s plan is to have Big Hulking Blond Teen attack Edward while she murders Bella’s face off.
Mari: PLEASE. It took her hundreds of pages to figure out that someone breaking and enter-cleaning her room was related to the plot.
K: True…
Edward starts reading BHBT’s mind and telling him that Victoria doesn’t love him and just brought him there as cannon fodder. Victoria’s all “LOL, he so silly. You go get him, baby,” and this is apparently reassurance enough for BHBT. He goes to attack Edward, but Wolf!Seth flies out of nowhere and starts ripping him to pieces. Should have listened to Edward, son. (M: Generally, not murdering for love is a good idea. #SnarkLadyAdvice) (C: Murdering Edward is always a good idea though. And fun for the whole family.) (A: Co-signed. Get stake-sharpening, everyone! We’re hunting a vampire!) (K: I call dibs on the flamethrower!)
Victoria and Edward circle around each other. Victoria clearly rivals Alice in the dancing-at-inappropriate-times stakes, because Bella tells us that Victoria “sashayed back“. All I can think of is Flight of the Conchords.
Mari: I’ll see you that and raise you RuPaul:
K: She’s apparently torn between her desire to not die and her desire to murder Bella’s face off. Edward starts taunting her, and I continue to give zero fucks. Wolf!Seth and BHBT’s fight brings them right up by Edward, and Victoria’s all “Whaaaaaaat??” when she realises that the Cullens and the wolf pack have teamed up.
Edward and Victoria finally start fighting, but they move too fast for Bella to see a damned thing with her puny human eyeballs.
Mari: Why the hell would that seem like a good storytelling device to Meyer? You’ve literally built up this fight for, again, HUNDREDS OF PAGES and now it’s too fast for our narrator to even SEE?
DAMMIT.
Catherine: She already skipped most of it. The whole biggest part of it is going on miles away. I’m thinking we’ve come to the conclusion that she may not be the super best at writing.
Annie: I’m fairly certain we came to that conclusion 2 books ago, but hey. Here we are. Because we are dedicated to our craft.
K: I really want to pull these books to pieces in an English class. But somehow I suspect the teachers would frown upon that…
BHBT manages to whack Wolf!Seth into a cliff face, and he collapses, whining. Conveniently, this dislodged a whole lot of sharp chunks of rock for Bella to potentially injure herself with use as weapons, and she grabs one.
Edward and Victoria’s fight is now full of “ow, stop hurting me” noises, but she doesn’t know whose they are. BHBT is getting ready to rip Wolf!Seth’s throat out. So Bella decides to SLICE OPEN HER FUCKING ARM AND DISTRACT EVERYONE WITH THE SMELL OF HER DELICIOUS BLOOD. Victoria’s distracted, and Bella says that “in the split second that I stared into Victoria’s eyes, I thought I heard a familiar, exasperated sigh.” Not gonna lie, I laughed. Because you just know that in the non-PG version of this book, Edward’s thinking “God-fucking-dammit, Bella. Not again, you dipshit.”
Mari: And you know that while she only thinks she heard a sigh, Edward definitely took a moment to go UUUGH WHAT WHY SIIIIIIIGH.
Catherine: Fair mention that Bella got this idea from the long-ass 30 page story that the Old Quil told a thousand fucking pages ago. The Third Wife thing. Yeah, that. You may see that as foreshadowing since we have shaved this tome down to a manageable length in our recaps but Meyer had Bella listen to a story that was 30 FULL SIZE HARDCOVER PAGES long and then take one fucking detail from it to use later.
K: In my defence, I took a three week international trip between reading that chunk of the book and this one. But even if I hadn’t, I doubt I would have been paying close enough attention to join those dots.
Anyway, Edward takes advantage of the distraction to throw Victoria into a tree, then rip BHBT’s arm off. Victoria leaps at Bella, but Edward throws BHBT’s arm at her (I’m literally crying tears of laughter right now. I blame the alcohol) (M: I just had a bowl of cereal and I’m also laughing) and somehow that knocks her into yet another tree.
Wolf!Seth manages to get himself together and rips BHBT’s other arm off. Literally all I can think of right now is Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
BHBT screams at Victoria for help, but she ignores him. Wolf!Seth hurls himself at BHBT, knocking the two of them into the woods. He proceeds to rip more bits of BHBT and we know that BHBT is dead because he’s stopped screaming. Victoria gives zero fucks, just like the Snark Ladies.
She backs away from Edward, then sprints for the forest. He catches her, and the chapter finishes with this:
“Edward’s mouth brushed once across her neck, like a caress. The squealing clamor coming from Seth’s efforts covered every other noise, so there was no discernible sound to make the image one of violence. He could have been kissing her.
And then the fiery tangle of hair was no longer connected to the rest of her body. The shivering orange waves fell to the ground, and bounced once before rolling toward the trees.”
Um. So did he cut her head off with his teeth? Or did he somehow shave her head by making out with her neck? I guess we’ll find out next time. Sorry, Mari…
Mari: If there are no assault kisses, I’ll consider myself lucky to cover teeth hair cuts.
Em-dash count: FIFTY ONE ARE YOU SHITTING ME MEYER?
Ellipses count: 12.
Next time on Eclipse: This pointless book continues long after the Snark Ladies have run out of fucks to give in Chapter 25.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
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I am a 30-something year-old human woman who lives in Maine. I'm a freelance writer who mostly spends time that I should be doing that, watching T.V. I also love reading and comic books way too much.