Bella Swan is finally where she has wanted to be since not long after meeting Edward Cullen: she is poised to become a vampire, too, and join his family. There’s only one drawback for her, however: Edward wants her to marry him. Having seen what an early marriage did for her parents, Bella recoils from the idea of being married, but because she and Edward have worked out some arrangements and compromises, she is doing it.

That should be the end of the story for her: marriage, then eternal life as a vampire, with her true love at her side for always. Of course, things don’t exactly go that way, not smoothly, and after the honeymoon, a big wrench is thrown in the works, and Bella’s life is again on the line, and the Volturi waiting to descend.

Breaking Dawn is a fairly satisfying end to the story of Bella and Edward, and after reading the whole series, it is particularly nice to see the plot lines tied up so nicely for everyone, werewolf best friend Jacob included. Sometimes it seems a little too wrapped up, but Stephenie Meyer is no doubt an incurable romantic who loves to see a happy ending. Seems most of her readers are, too, so most everyone is happy.

Rated: Moderate (for young readers) for sexual references. The violence in this book is pretty minimal, really; the mayhem that happens goes on outside of Bella’s viewpoint, so we only hear about it later. This is probably the least violent of the series, in fact. But the sexual talk is at its highest in the series; Bella and Edward marry and can feel morally justified having sex, and while there are no details about it at all, they still talk about it a lot, about how great it is and how it’s the end-all-be-all, how they’d be happy to be doing it all the time. Again, the “action” is completely “off-screen,” but there’s just so much talk about it.