In Which Bella Needs To Buy A HELMET
Jacob starts giving Bella riding lessons, going through the mechanics of how to ride. Credit to Meyer for doing this correctly, even emphasizing the braking, which Bella, of course, forgets. As a rider, I can confirm that you can essentially ignore the rear (foot) brake when you first start learning to ride. She manages to stall the bike the first time when Hallucination-Edward shows up to give her crap about riding, then he's all over her when she takes off in first gear and manages to wreck the bike on a curve. Maybe Meyer has a ride, maybe her editor does good research.
Note to Jacob: a windy road in the woods is not an ideal training locale. Find somewhere less tree-lined.
So Bella cracks her head open (+1 clumsy) and has to get stitches. En route, Jacob takes off his shirt and Bella notes "you're sort of beautiful". Wow. Way to hold firm on those friendship boundries and not tease him along, you cold-hearted...
There's another accident a weak later, but it's really poorly written. After describing the fallout from the first wreck there's a paragraph break and suddenly "The next Wednesday before I could get back from the ER..." is thrown at you. I'm reading this carefully and I was confused when Charlie goes from believing her trip & fall story (the first one) to not believing it (because it's suddenly a week later and the same lie). Minor quibble, but annoying. Might just be me.
Anywho, on this particular crash Bella is thrilled to get a solid 5 minutes of Edward harassment in her mind before flying headlong into a tree.
BUY A HELMET, YOU MORONS.
I'm not going to rant about helmets in the real world. I personally would never ride without one (I have a retired helmet with some nice gashes across the top) but if you've got the insurance and want to go all-in on never, ever crashing, so be it. This, however, is ludicrous. Bella is over-established as the clumsiest person in the history of history and she's apparently riding in flip-flops and a t-shirt in the woods. Yeah, it's first-gear tooling around, but as far as I can tell she's wrecked every time she's ridden and cracked her noggin in at least 2 of those. Why don't you have a jacket and helmet, you work at a sporting goods store!? Grab a baseball helmet or something.
Why does she do this, again? "I'd take whatever pain..."
Oh, that's right, it's a tool to get her cantankerous ghost of an ex to show up and abuse her verbally. I know I'm harping on this point, but I really cannot move past the psychological train-wreck that Meyer is presenting as our heroine. Given an opportunity to expand Bella without the constant rescuing by her supernatural boyfriend or their interminable mooning and angsting over their predicament, what we get instead is a protagonist who can barely function on her own and who is now starting to abuse the friendship/cursh of a 15 year old. Bella's victimhood has simply been replaced by another form of codependency.
In order to avoid explaining another head wound to Charlie, Bella decides to go hiking with Jacob. By the way, Bella, hiking is the activity you used as an alibi for your last injury. Maybe your "safer activities" should actually be safer. She picks the sparkle-meadow as a target for a potential adrenaline/memory jolt so she can be abused again and Jacob plots out a search pattern to find it. While discussing their plans, Charlie reveals that there have been a rash of bear sightings in the area, and warns the two to be careful. On the other side of town, Billy is amused by Bella's concern about bears. So that clues us in to the werewolf factor pretty directly.
On their first hike the topic of discussion returns to Sam's cult. Embry has now joined, but somehow Billy isn't worried about this, either. So more obvious werewolf clues or we have to assume that Billy is senile. I have to think these clues are for the readers, since neither Jacob or Bella seem to question the idea of bears. I'm not sure who possibly isn't on board with the werewolves & Sam connection by now.
SumUp C
Lots of disconnected thoughts:
OK, so last of the complaints about Bella's masochistic need to hear her ex boyfriend admonish her terrible decisions. Done. Seriously. Done. Big deep breaths. Clearly this isn't some psychic connection with Edward or Alice, so this truly is in her head. I suspect this is somehow going to be connected with Bella's love for Edward summoning up rational thoughts during irrational moments. The problems with this are numerous. Bella's ideal version of a concerned Edward comes off as a verbally abusive father figure rather than a concerned love interest. Her psychotic need to hear his voice is yet another layer of addiction on an already tall addict cake. It does nothing to add to a sense of lost love or Bella escaping her funk. Moving on. Moving on.
The not-romance between Bella and Jacob is crossing the line to tiresome. The descriptions are satisfying and the conversation still rings true, but it's dragging on and starting to become romance-novel padding. I'm not docking any points, but I'm not giving any until this actually goes somewhere.
Buy a helmet. Anything. Gods.
I'm wondering about sparkle meadow and what it will mean romantically for Bella and Jacob or the plot. I'm tempted to put money on Jacob making a move on her there while she's overwhelmed by memories, but I just can't bring myself to do it. There's too many werewolves in the woods, ready to jump onto the plot bus. Clearly Sam & company are werewolves and Embry was the latest to turn. That means Jacob shouldn't be far off. Maybe he tries a move and suddenly wolfs out. Rescued by Sam & company who've been following and waiting. Bella trips and he has to turn to get help. Options, options.
Casting my thoughts wider, I'm trying to figure out Edward's return. I'd have a pile of money on him rescuing Bella from the werewolves (or similar) if it weren't for the prelude and Jacob's description of werewolves in the last book being so positive. Taking him at his word, werewolves are nothing like the established myths. They're like Native Superheros and that clashes with being a huge risk to Bella. Plus, I'm trying to picture how the idea of Bella trying to rescue Edward fits into the story anywhere but near the end. That has to be the big climax, the big romance novel reunion and unless Edward shows up soon, then wanders off again to need rescuing I can't see him popping up in the werewolf-hijinx that are surely mere pages away.
I just need a few more pieces...
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