Previously: Jacob formed his own pack because he’s an Alpha and he’s embracing his birthright or some wank.
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Kirsti: This chapter is titled “Some people just don’t grasp the concept of unwelcome.” Yeah, and one of those people is Stephenie Meyer in publishing this abomination of a book.
Ahem.
Catherine: We can high five on that.
K: Jacob’s on the verge of falling asleep (because apparently no matter who narrates the story, we have to read about them falling asleep every 20 freaking pages?) after having patrolled all night when Seth starts howling. But it’s not the pack attacking. It’s Leah, who’s decided to join their pissy little pack so that she doesn’t have to see Sam’s big dumb imprinted-on-Emily face any more. Except that, like, she claims it’s to protect her little brother.
Jacob’s all “Um. You hate vampires? This is a vampire protection gig??”, and Leah points out that he ALSO hates vampires and says that she’ll keep her distance and run patrols and shit. All of this, I should add, happens in italics because they’re still in wolf form and having psychic conversations. Sigh.
Anyway, after another page and a half, Jacob joins the dots on the whole get-away-from-Sam thing, and Leah’s all “Look, I’ll stay out of your way, just don’t make me go back to Sam or I’ll murder your face off.” Is this entire chapter going to be “Wah, Leah’s here and I don’t want her here”?? If so, I don’t think I have the energy or patience for 20 pages of the SAME FUCKING CONVERSATION.
Catherine: ALL of these Jacob chapters so far have just been one thing happening per chapter and them talking about it in wolf form. I guess we should just be glad that they’re shorter than Bella’s purple prose-laden thoughts?
Marines: I’m not happy about anything, honestly.
Annie: Co-signed.
K: Breaking Dawn: 754 pages of Not Happy About Anything.
Leah and Seth head off on patrol. As he watches them go, Jacob tells us that “if there had to be three of us, it was hard to think of anyone that I would trade her for.” “Paul?” Leah suggests, because being a psychic werewolf makes it hard to keep your thoughts to yourself. When Jacob begrudgingly agrees, Leah says her new goal is to be less annoying than Paul. This conversation has taken – I am not even kidding right now – NINE PAGES. Think of how many trees died just for that one scene.
Annie: There is no reason for this book to be the size it is. No reason at all.
K: SERIOUSLY. You could prune this thing back to a third of its size and it would… still be a trashfire, but at least it would be a succinct trashfire.
Jacob turns human and heads inside. Carlisle informs him that Bella’s pretty much the same as the previous night and that Edward doesn’t want to leave her side. Jacob slumps against the porch, and Carlisle takes advantage of his exhaustion to be all “HEY, THANKS FOR LEAVING YOUR PACK TO PROTECT MY PREGNANT-WITH-A-PARASITIC-FREAKISHLY-FAST-GROWING-BABY DAUGHTER-IN-LAW!”. Jacob asks if Bella will survive being turned, and Carlisle says it’s basically 50/50 because vampire venom can fix a lot of shit, but this is some fucked up shit that’s never been seen before, so…*shrug*.
Jacob asks about the IV tubes and stuff, and Carlisle tells him it’s because “The foetus isn’t compatible with her body” (WTF) and that it’s draining literally all of her strength and it’s a problem because her body is rejecting every form of nutrition, including intravenous. So they’re basically all sitting around watching her starve to death. Jesus fucking Christ, this book is HORRIFYING. Like… HOW HAVE PEOPLE GIVEN THIS THING FIVE STARS I DO NOT UNDERSTAAAAAAAAAAAND.
Catherine: I refuse to believe that they have and I refuse to check Amazon so that I can keep my faith in humanity intact.
Mari: Oh, the people who have given this five stars come and FIND ME. On Twitter, on YouTube. They stand by all of their life decisions and would like you to know that a love story between a mother and the baby starving her to death slowly is just what they love.
Annie: Well, because the problem is that we’re reading way to much into these books, and that Meyer isn’t being racist at all, nor is she glorifying abusive relationships, we’re just PUTTING TOO MUCH THOUGHT INTO IT.
So basically, we just need to stop thinking. Ladies aren’t supposed to think! We should just stick to raising kids and cooking.
K: I just don’t understand how people don’t go “Holy shit, that’s fucked up” when that’s the exact response my fifteen year old students had when I pointed out that this series features an incredibly abusive relationship.
BUT I DIGRESS.
Jacob feels super angry at the stupid foetus and its life sucking powers, and then thinks to himself that it’s “Probably just looking for something to sink its teeth into – a throat to suck dry. Since it wasn’t big enough to kill anyone else yet, it settled for sucking Bella’s life from her.” I mean, to SOME extent, that’s what pregnancy is anyway?? (A: It totally is, guys. You lose teeth AND hair. And that’s the easy parts.) But this is hella fucked up, you guys.
Carlisle wibbles on about how everything would be so much easier if he could get an ultrasound image, but LOL NOPE, this baby is encased in marble and ain’t nothing getting through. He starts muttering about how it would help to even know how many chromosomes it has, and then informs Jacob that vampires are literally a different species to humans because humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes and vampires have 25. This whole thing is utterly pointless and a waste of perfectly good trees.
Catherine: Oh no, it comes up again. It’s just still fucking stupid when it does.
K: GOOD TO KNOW.
Jacob asks what that means and… oh fuck no. Carlisle says that he thought it meant the species were completely different but the fact that Bella’s knocked up means “we’re more genetically compatible than I’d thought.” And then he follows it up with this atrocity: “I didn’t know to warn them.” Right, because what this series needed was MORE angsty bullshit about sex.
Jacob wonders aloud how many chromosomes he has, and Carlisle sheepishly admits that he has 24 because he totally stole some blood and ran some tests when he was treating Jacob the previous summer. Um. That… Yeah, that breaches ALL kinds of medical codes and shit, dude. That is totally not okay. At all.
Annie: LOL, science isn’t real, Kirsti. We’re living in a post-truth world!
K: How foolish of me not to remember: alternate facts are a thing now.
He justifies it by saying that it’s because he finds werewolves so totally fascinating. And then… Then. We’re treated to this piece of racist bullshit: “Your family’s divergence from humanity is much more interesting.” DIVERGENCE. FROM. HUMANITY. Yeah. You read that right. Basically every Indigenous character in this trainwreck of a series ISN’T HUMAN.
Mari: Don’t forget, though, that while werewolves have 24 chromosomes, vampires still best them with that 25. I believe Meyer has absolutely no idea what she’s even talking about, but she had to slip that in there anyway.
K: Nothing is better than The Whitest of All White People.
We’re treated to like half a page of them listening to Edward talking inside – asking Esme if she can watch Bella for like 5 minutes so he and Rosalie can talk to Carlisle. There is literally no point to this. (C: No one edited this book. Literally NO ONE.) Anyway, Edward comes outside and is all “Sooooo Jacob had an idea that might work.” Jacob has no idea what Edward’s talking about, and Edward tells Carlisle that maybe in focusing on what Bella needs to survive, they’ve been ignoring what the FOETUS needs.
Are you seriously telling me that not one of these hundred year old asshats with their 50+ senior years of high school didn’t think that MAYBE a half-vampire baby would want… oh, I don’t know… BLOOD?!?!?!?! SERIOUSLY?! NO ONE THOUGHT OF THIS BEFORE. THIS IS SO FUCKING STUPID. I WANT TO BURN EVERYTHING.
Catherine: Also Edward at least (if not some of the others) also went to medical school and was, of course, THE BESTEST SMARTEST doctor ever with a gold masters in body-ology or whatever. I think it said that in Midnight Sun or something? I remember that being a thing. So yeah. Two super doctors who don’t know how pregnancy works.
Mari: Carlisle has the idea to steal Jacob’s blood to study while he was unconscious but couldn’t figure out that maybe a vampire baby needed blood? They spent one of the previous books going after a baby army and talking about how hungry they were all the time AND NO ONE THOUGHT OF THAT NOW?
Annie: Guys, if they’d known this from the beginning, Meyer wouldn’t be able to build suspense or have a plot, you sacrifice characters for plot. You all wouldn’t make it one second as a shitty writer of bad abuse-romances. This is shitty writing 101.
K: This is like the whole “Darth Vader would never have happened if Padme had just HAD PRENATAL CARE” debacle all over again…
There’s some minor debate about the best way to get the blood into Bella, and Rosalie’s all “NO TIME. Just make her drink it.” Jacob’s super grossed out, which is pretty fucking legit. He asks if they’re going to shove a tube down Bella’s throat, and Rosalie says Bella will do anything for the baby. Bella, girl. Sometimes you have to draw a line. Especially when THE SIGHT OF BLOOD MAKES YOU PASS OUT OH MY GOD THIS IS SO DUUUUUUUUUMB. I hate this book. (C: You guys keep reading. I’m gonna be over here puking.)
They head inside to talk to Bella, and she apparently looks like a waxy gross corpse already. Ew. They fill her in, and she insists that she can do it because it’s “Practice for the future, right?“. Dude. No. Nooooooo. Just stop.
She makes a joke about someone going out to catch her a bear, and after exchanging awkward glances, Carlisle and Edward tell her that the foetus is probably craving human blood so they’re going to use the stash they pulled from the blood bank in case she needed surgery or a transfusion or whatever.
Bella runs her hand over her stomach and says they should go for it. “My first vampire act,” she says. And with that, this TOTALLY POINTLESS PIECE OF SHIT CHAPTER finally comes to an end. Thank God for that.
Next time on Breaking Dawn: Bella drinks some blood, I’m guessing, in Chapter 13.
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.