New Moon
Stephenie Meyer, 2006
★ 3.63 from 2.2m ratings on Goodreads
A girl who has lost the person she built her life around has to learn how to keep breathing—and whether the old stories in her town are real. A hushed, aching first-person voice carries you through grief and longing at a slow, heavy pace.
Feels like grief, longing and dread. About love, memory and death.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you want to sit with heartbreak and memory rather than rush toward action. Be warned that the story is slow and angst-heavy, the central romance can read as codependent, and some readers find the use of Jacob frustrating.
Why read it
Read it for an intense, lyrical portrait of grief and first love's aftermath, and for a story that lets sadness take up real space.
A page from the book
Grief keeps its own clock, and it does not keep good time.
Time passes. Even when it seems impossible. Even when each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does. Even for me. What readers say
Readers are deeply divided over New Moon: many feel Bella’s heartbreak and depression are painfully vivid or oddly comforting, while others are frustrated and angry at the slow, angst-heavy story, the toxic codependent romance, and the use of Jacob. Some reread with nostalgic affection.
Stephenie Meyer.Meyer began Twilight after a vivid dream of Bella and Edward in a meadow; she wrote the first draft in a few months while raising three sons.
Books that feel like this
More by Stephenie Meyer
Twilight
Stephenie Meyer, 2005
A girl moves to a rain-drenched town and falls for a boy whose beauty is inseparable from danger. Mood, appetite, and bad decisions.
Breaking Dawn
Stephenie Meyer, 2008
The fourth Twilight novel: Bella and Edward marry, and every supernatural faction in the Pacific Northwest has an opinion about it.
Eclipse
Stephenie Meyer, 2007
Bella's engagement to Edward collides with Jacob's love and a string of killings in Forks, forcing a choice she can't make cleanly.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is New Moon for me?
- You may like it if you want to sit with heartbreak and memory rather than rush toward action. Be warned that the story is slow and angst-heavy, the central romance can read as codependent, and some readers find the use of Jacob frustrating.
- What is New Moon like?
- A hushed, aching first-person voice carries you through grief and longing at a slow, heavy pace. Feels like grief, longing and dread. About love, memory and death.
- What should I read after New Moon?
- If you liked New Moon, try Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (J. K. Rowling), It's Not Summer Without You (Jenny Han) and Bag of Bones (Stephen King).
A taste of the feed
How much changes when a choice stops being made for you?
It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew — and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents — that there was all the difference in the world.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince · J. K. Rowling
Grief makes a person feel like a stranger to their own life.
I wasn’t in Cousins. Conrad and I weren’t together, and Susannah was dead. Nothing would ever be the same again. It had been—How many days had it been? How many days exactly?—two months since Susannah had died and I still couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t let myself believe it. When a person you love dies, it doesn’t feel real. It’s like it’s happening to someone else. It’s someone else’s life. I’ve never been good with the abstract. What does it mean when someone is really and truly gone?
It's Not Summer Without You · Jenny Han
What tenderness looks like after it has learned to bite back.
Soft hearts don’t survive here.” “What kinds of hearts do?” He leaned down until their eyes were level. “Hearts with teeth.” He reached out and gently gripped her chin in his hand, rubbing the pad of his thumb across her full, bottom lip. She was frozen in place. “C’mon, angel, show me your teeth.
Phantasma · Kaylie Smith
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