Eclipse
Stephanie Meyer
(Little, Brown Book Group)
For all those people out there immersed in the Twilight saga, it has to be said Eclipse is arguably the best book yet.
Following on from New Moon, Eclipse continues to tug at our heart strings in following the complicated - but so entrancing - love story of the plainly human Bella Swan and vampire Edward Cullen.
I know I personally was disappointed by Edward's absence in the majority of New Moon, so for all those people who read the previous book on edge waiting for his return, I have good news: Edward has returned to being a central character and Meyer has continued to enhance the passion and deep-set emotion of the love Edward and Bella share. However, love for the happy couple is never so simple.
A neighbouring town is plagued by murderous newborn vampires, Victoria returns to kill Bella in order to avenge her lover's death and Jacob is still completely besotted with with Bella.
In an interesting twist, despite having rekindled her relationship with Edward on his return to Forks, she discovers something different about her feelings for Jacob in return.
Eclipse captures the rawest of emotions in the characters, alternating and often caught between love and hate, happiness and pain and anticipation and dread. Meyer has written Eclipse so effectively that these emotions really connect with the reader.
Meyer changes her writing style again, reverting back to a similar style to what we saw in the original Twilight and delves deeper into not only the emotions of the love triangle between Bella, Edward and Jacob but into the emotions of characters who up until this book have remained generally as plot accessories.
Eclipse entrances the reader with passionate love, binding ties of friendship, dramatic situations and difficult sacrifices that make this saga so engaging, leaving the reader with the classic suspense that Meyer has delivered so well in every book so far (again particularly in Twilight) that she could basically claim the technique as her own.
Eclipse does have plot similarities with Twilight which in some parts can get a bit repetitive, but just when you begin to think that it might be getting a bit predictable, Meyer throws a spanner in the works with a big question to answer that means Bella may have to make an ultimate sacrifice. Her love, or her friendship? Life or death?
4 out of 5
