Friday, August 15, 2008

Girl's Night Out - Breaking Dawn

Finally! Here are the photos from our Breaking Dawn Release party! We had soooo much fun! Eleven of us met up at the theater to see Mama Mia - we took up almost an entire row and were the rowdiest bunch in the room! After the movie we walked over to The Cheesecake Factory for dinner where we were joined by another 2 gals from the ward. What a fun group of women! We had such a great time eating and laughing together and just having a night away from being mommies!

At eleven, we drove over to Barnes and Noble where one of the managers recognized Tiffany as being from the Eagan group by her Cheesecake Factory bag (the schedule of events was mentioned in the Star Tribune article)! There were about 150 people at the bookstore - mostly teenage girls and we all picked up our copies of the book and headed home by about 12:30. Our group was reading aloud from the first chapter on the drive home and we had another car on speaker phone listening along as we drove!

The book. I finished Saturday afternoon after Julie and Kelly. It was kind of hysterical to get so many phone calls on Saturday from people wanting know how far along I was and what I thought so far. I enjoyed the book but Twilight will always be my favorite from the series. I thought this one seemed a bit rushed and I was very shocked by the whole honeymoon baby (I hate baby's name)! Once I got over the shock, I loved how she handed the pregnancy, birth and transformation - I cannot imagine how they would film those scenes and keep the movie under an "R" rating. I missed the whole Cullen family in this book. It felt like most of them were absent and poor Edward spent 80% of the book in angst! I am glad that Jacob got his happy ending thought I have to admit I was kind of rooting for him to end up with Leah somehow. I loved all of the new vampires though when I finished the book I felt like it was missing a big battle scene at the end.

I would like to read it again, slowly to get a better feel for the book - this first reading was a speed reading. Overall, I love a happy ending, but I felt like Bella did not have to sacrifice enough. Becoming a vampire was supposed to be this huge sacrifice and in the end Bella got Edward, the wedding, the baby, the wolves are happy, Jacob is happy, she gets to continue having a relationship with Charlie, no one close to her died during the confrontation with the Volturi - it was all just a bit too tidy/happy for me.

2 comments:

  1. glad you had such a good time with your friends. i saw "mama mia" with two of my close friends. two of us got up and danced at the end credits to "waterloo" and other songs and we embarassed the third friend, but we finally got her on her feet. we especially loved the scene in the movie when the men with flippers come out of the waves. you're right, meryl streep never disappoints (loved her singing "winner takes it all").

    i find i agree with all your "breaking dawn" critiques especially about how tidy the ending was. i would have liked to have seen bella sacrifice more too. plus the more i think about it, the more i realize how much i would have preferred for jacob to have been on a different path, unconnected to bella. i guess meyer needed a strong reason for the werewolves to stand beside the vampires at the end, but i think it would have been healthier for all involved if jacob found happiness via another route. i do find that i like the peaceful end to the battle scene better just since it wasn't what was expected and often times i think bullies are cowards. meyer definitely took this book in directions i didn't anticipate.

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  2. Great fun to see so many of my FRIENDS! I miss you all so terribly. It's tough going through the whole move transition thing again. I agree with your critique of the book. I still have a feeling of "and?" Hope all is well!

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