Why did I reread Breaking Dawn after despising it and wishing it had never been published? I have a good excuse. I was sick (thank you again germ incubating first graders) and my brain had reverted to mush. The good news is that I think my shock and horror about all the icky parts (Bella’s pregnancy, Edward biting the baby who I will not type a name for in protest against the name out of Bella’s body, Jacob imprinting on the baby, total letdown of an ending, Bella and Edward being totally detached from their child, etc) wore off in the months since I first read the book.
I think because I had been through the creeped out phase and vented to my Twilight reading cousins about it I was able to just read it and enjoy the resolution that Bella and Edward got to be together forever. I ignored everything else and paid attention to the good parts (the wedding, the relief that Bella gets to change into a vampire, Bella beating Emmett arm wrestling, the last page when Bella used her gift to allow Edward into her mind).
So even though I still think the ick outweighs the happy I have to give Stephenie Meyer credit for creating such an intense world for readers to even have such violent opinions about in the first place. In the end, Twilight is still my favorite of the series because to borrow from Caitlin Flanagan on this subject, “It’s …the first book [Twilight] that seemed at long last to rekindle something of the girl-reader in me…never have I had such an intense relationship with books as when I was a young girl. I raged inside them and lived a double emotional life (half real girl, half inhabitant of a distant world).” I think Caitlin says it better than I ever could so I’ll leave it at that.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200812/twilight-vampires
