T.02.11 Cult

In Which There Is Pointless Padding

Bella continues to try and contact Jacob through the great wall of Billy, then decides to confront him directly. She calls Charlie who reveals that the missing hiker watch has been upgraded to dead hiker warning.

When she reaches the reservation she picks up Quil, who is scared and reveals that Jacob has now joined Sam's cult. Bella drops him off and parks in front of Billy's house to wait out Jacob. When Jacob finally arrives, he is angry and brooding. Bella drags him away from Sam, Embry, Paul and Jared, but Jacob is conflicted and short. To illustrate this, the eye emotes flow in like a river. Shots at the ready:

• eyes = hostile
• eyes = fear
• eyes = rage burning
• eyes = critical
• eyes = fury
• eyes = desperate
• eyes = angry
• eyes = full of pity.

The eyes also "narrowed", which is how you correctly describe eyes to indicate an emotion. Bella can assume emotions, obviously, but time and time and time again we get lazy emotions handed to Bella via eyes. Everyone might as well have signs on their forehead that flash their inner feelings.

"I'm not good enough to be your friend anymore", Jacob tells her. "I'm not good". These are flashbacks to you-know-who as we ride the same rollercoaster painted a new color. Bella gets upset and goes home. Charlie is concerned, so she shares the cult idea with him and Charlie gets into a fight with Billy over the phone. Ah, actual drama. Sort of.

SumUp: D

Second verse, same as the first. We've ridden the romance-o-coaster with Jacob up to this point and now that we're at the big reveal, it's pretty much a let down. The eye-emoting doesn't help, but we're back to mucking around in the swamp of "I'm no good for you". We know he's a werewolf, we know Bella will find out (by someone telling her, I'm guessing) so why are we stuck going through the obvious motions?

Let's recap the Jacob saga, starting back in "Waking Up":

• Chapter 4: C-
• Chapter 5: B-
• Chapter 6: A
• Chatper 7: B-
• Chapter 8: C
• Chapter 9: B
• Chapter 10: B+

Solid scores, a B- average and to be fair Chapter 4 was the really weird Port Angeles movie and bar scene. Only Chapter 8 bothered me enough to drop down to a C, and that was because the whole "summon my ex boyfriend via danger" idea really hit a frustrating summit. Why am I bringing this up? Because I think we're on a downward slope. Jacob is going to be difficult and Edward is lurking somewhere over the horizon. The Victoria plot is stalled until we get past the Werewolf reveal and we still haven't reached the end of the second act.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope this trend continues, but I'm looking around wildly for some path other than the romance novel reunion at the end of this book and that doesn't give me anything to grab.