New Moon

Yesterday, I finished New Moon the sequel to Stephenie Meyer's Twilight.  And I think that the best I can say for it is it's really kinda uninteresting.  I mean, it's like Bella is all torn:  should she be true to Edward, or should she move on to Jacob, who is not terribly interesting, as a character, but is certainly more age appropriate as a boyfriend.  And that's about all there is to it.  I have to admit that I enjoy a good YA high school-romancy novel; I'm all for that.  And, at least so far, that's about all that Meyer's Twilight Saga is.  The vampire / supernatural / pseudomythical stuff reads like a veneer and nothing more.  And as YA romance, it's OK, not great but OK.  But I really can't see that it's anything more.  And really, silly YA romance novels are A-OK.  But why are we pretending that this is something more profound?  I don't get it.  Interestingly, there are moments where the novel could become something more.  Bella, for example, faces several moral delimmas--her values come into conflict, and it starts to look like she's forced to make an ethically complicated, difficult decision.  But in the end, she doesn't really agonize over these decisions; they come easily.  And she often doesn't have to make these difficult decisions--the plot somehow intervenes and makes them for her.  And I have to say that there's nothing especially interesting (and certainly nothing sexy, IMO) about the Byronic, brooding vampire, caught between his bloodsucking nature and his revulsion over this nature.  This is somehow so passe.  I want to say, "Dude, you are a vampire.  Deal with it."  I guess that this conflict, again, could allow for something more profound to happen in this work, but Meyer never really commits to "going there" and dealing with difficult questions.  And still, noone seems interested in the fact that, at the end of it all, Edward is basically very controlling and even manipulative when it comes to Bella  Given current statistics pertaining to relationship violence, especially among teens, isn't this about the last thing our society needs?  I mean, here we are, encouraged to really romanticize the relationship between the 17-year-old female mortal and her 110-year-old vampire lover, when it's just a repackaging of the same old controlling boyfriend.