Twilight, 19

In which Bella Swan has the worst breakup ever. With her Dad. This is every bit as disturbingly unsympathetic as it sounds. Yes kids, its Twilight time….

Plot: Bella and her merry band of moping vampires arrive at the Swan house, where Charlie is awake and waiting. She storms in, yelling that she dumped Edward and has to leave town immediately to escape the pain, or something. Because, obviously, its completely rational for her to flee across state lines instead of asking her father, who happens to be the fucking police chief, to make sure that her creepy ex-boyfriend stays well away. Charlie, temporarily behaving like a parent from another, much better book, suggests that she suspend all drastic life choices for a time when she isn't sobbing hysterically. Bella shouts the exact words her mother used when going splitsville from Charlie and Forks years ago, which your blogger doesn't doubt for a millisecond is the kind of thing divorced parents willingly share with their progeny, and runs out into the night to rejoin her stalker (meaning Edward). Charlie, once again behaving exactly like a character from a Stephenie Meyer book, makes no attempt to stop his teenaged daughter from driving herself to Arizona in the middle of the night, in a truck that your blogger wouldn't trust for a trip to the grocery store. Edward and Bella head back to vampire central, where Laurent is waiting to make some conveniently over-dramatised pronouncements of impending doom, and then everyone splits up to carry out their various parts in the previously described asinine plan. Finis

Rant: Well, that was all kinds of awful. Bella Swan is a deeply, profoundly fucked-up human being. I get that she can't tell Daddy about the vampires. I get that she needs to be somewhere other than Forks in the immediate future. But there has to be a better way. Something that, just for example, doesn't involve making your own father re-live what was probably the worst moment of his entire life. The ends, Stephenie Meyer, do not justify the means. Yes, we all know that Edward and Bella are going to ge their little slice of bonerifically fairy-tale happiness. Congratulations, you're capable of writing a story in which the protagonists get exactly what they want, regardless of how much agony they cause for the genuinely good people helping them along the way. And by congratulations, I mean "grow the fuck up."

Also, the big dramatic moment in this chapter involves Bella using words that neither of her parents, under any concievable circumstances, would have allowed her to hear. Ever. But that isn't important, because Edward-mumble-murmur-dazzle-kiss-love. Once again, Stephenie Meyer, you prove that your grasp of things like "logic" is limited to creating falsely-emotional payoffs to problems that never would have existed without your sledge-hammering them into this latrine-drip of a novel. So, good job with that.

One last thing: The tracker, at the end of this pustule of a chapter, is patrolling alone around the Cullen residence. Alone. There are seven Cullens, by my count. Why, precisely, don't three or four of them go for a jog, find the tracker using Alice's flawless ability to pinpoint exactly where he will be in five minutes, rip his head off and dance on his grave? Oh, right, because violence is only ok when perpetrated against innocent humans and out of Cullen earshot. Sweet Jesus, how was this book ever published?