Heartbreak of Heathcliff Proportions

I've only recently entered the Twilight fold. Having initially read reviews of the series in library journals and having heard passionate testimonials from avid fans, I thought I would give it a try.



Inexorably, I fell absolutely and positively in love with the first three Twilight books. I read them (the first time, that is) in three days. Then, like a junkie,books, I feverishly searched the media for news on the movie, the books, and all things Stephanie Meyers.



Stephenie Meyer's books were my brand of heroin.



So, like millions of other strung out addicts, I lined up until midnight to score the ultimate fix. The final installment was in my hands.



I didn't know I was holding a ticking time bomb in my hands. One which would ultimately implode, destroying the magic spell of Meyer's world and the intense affection I held for its inhabitants.



Like many of you, I kept asking myself: "Who actually wrote this book? What happened? This must be a cruel joke...I will wake up tomorrow, and learn that Breaking Dawn is an elaborate hoax perpetrated to discredit Meyer."



Meyer has commented on her love of Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Having read these books dozens of times, I saw glimmers of their bittersweet brilliance in the first three Twilight books. I cried for Bella as I had cried for Cathy, Elizabeth, and Juliet.



And then I read Breaking Dawn.



For the first one hundred pages, I was entranced. I couldn't put the book down. I thought, "Finally, Bella and Edward can consummate their love, against seemingly impossible odds! Finally, the big payoff is here!"



Then, the heartbreak began...



Remember when Bella's heart cracks in two in Eclipse? Mine shattered the moment I read the words "little nudger."



When I read the first three books, I felt seventeen again. The butterflies in my stomach, the blinding tunnel vision, and the intense emotions experienced during that first love washed over me during Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse.



When Jacob left at the end of Eclipse, I cried. The price of true love was justly paid with his departure.



Price...A lot of the reviews I've read here aptly speak of "paying a price." Intense, obsessive, passionate love--a love of the Wuthering Heights variety, anyway--demands an exacting price. Bella cannot have Jacob and Edward, just as Catherine cannot have both Edgar and her beloved Heathcliffe.



The price of an extraordinary love is an ordinary life.



But the price--the sacrifice--makes the purchase more dear, makes it all the sweeter.



In Breaking Dawn, what price is paid? Bella gets Edward. Bella gets Jacob. Bella gets beauty and grace. Bella gets a baby. Bella gets a fairytale cottage. Bella gets all the powerful trappings of vampiric power without all the burden of newborn instincts. Bella gets to keep her human family. Bella gets Meyer's "perfect ending."



The perfect ending comes at what price?



The price is the love story, the plot, and the character development. The price is seeing Jacob turn from a noble suitor who knows when to bow out, into a toddler's pet.



The price is seeing the endearingly vulnerable Bella turn into a perfect shell of her former self.



The price is seeing Edward, who was once a continuously smoldering cauldron of desire, degraded to a level of abject affliction.



The price is watching Charlie turn from a loving and protective father into a "don't need to know" Homer Simpson.



The price is having to stomach a bloodbath,a mutant birth which rivals the absurdity of the alien reptile baby delivery of the "V",Breaking Dawn Hardcover; TV miniseries of the 1980's. (Remember that one, gentle reader?)



Bella's surrender of her human life to Edward should have ended intimately with his lips caressing her throat, not with fountains of blood spewing from her mouth as Jacob watches.



The price is too steep--much too heartbreaking--for me to pay.



My opinion is inconsequential. It matters to no one but me, but...



Not that you asked but...Ms. Meyer, you are a fantastically talented writer. You have the power to spin a story which transcends the ordinary and transports teens and housewives alike into a world of sparkling, amorous, and compelling fantasy. You are the real deal.



What hast thou wrought?



I know that you, like any writer worth his or her salt, wrote this book for yourself, for your own satisfaction. You wrote the story of Breaking Dawn for you.



I'm just so heartbroken that it wasn't written for me.