As any teenager will attest to, it is hard to concentrate on calculus and successfully two-time boyfriends at the same. If one of the boyfriends happens to be a devastatingly handsome vampire, and the other a werewolf devoted to you, it is a toss-up figuring out who to date and who to dump. Stephenie Meyer is back with Breaking Dawn, the fourth instalment in her Twilight series. As dramatically packaged in red, black and white as her other books in this saga, New Moon and Eclipse, it again traces the love between her passionate teen heroine Bella Swan and the two men in her life.

Bella is preparing for marriage to the gorgeous Edward Cullen. (For the previous 1,500 pages, Bella has been alternately bewitched and frustrated by Cullen’s tousled bronze hair and long pale fingers.) Cullen, however, is one of those rare, old-fashioned guys in the teen world who won’t make a move on a girl even if she throws herself at him. Part of a clan of vampires who’ve sworn off Homo sapiens, Edward has conquered his instinct to devour Bella over three books with succinct phrases like “the smell of your blood makes me lose control”.
Bella, though, is hooked from day one. She hasn’t for a moment doubted their eternal love and is impatient for the wedding night and for Cullen to drain her blood to transform her into a vampire-predator like himself.

Meyer is one of those rare authors like J.K. Rowling who can drive young adults into screaming hysterics over books. She captures the angst and frenzy of teenage love and their struggle to make the right choice. Should Edward kill Bella, turn her into a vampire and deprive her of the right to pursue a normal human life?

Breaking Dawn begins with Edward reluctantly going through the wedding vows with Bella. His rivalry with the more normal Bella-suitor Jacob Black (he’s merely a werewolf) is far from over. Black makes a surprise appearance at the wedding and creates an unpleasant scene; he’s dead against Bella being bitten and giving up regular life. But Bella is determined to embrace her destiny as the wife of a vampire and dismisses the brief panic attack that comes on right before consummating the marriage. In keeping with Meyer’s image of clean PG 13 writing for young adults, the bedroom is summarily dealt with; she doesn’t dwell on the wedding night, which is a bit anti-climactic, considering how much Bella has fought temptation through the series.

But, then, the heroine immediately has other issues to deal with, a vampire pregnancy, for one, that leaves her in a dazed state. Far more daunting prospects for the readers loom ahead; childbirth described here is not for the queasy or the fainthearted. The werewolves’ clan can read Black’s thoughts, and are panic-stricken that the offspring might be a forbidden, immortal child. Eventually the vampires and the werewolves meet in a clearing in the forest. Meyer’s alternative universe of werewolves and vampire babies with superpowers is wholly absorbing. Her characters remain young and beautiful forever and you breathlessly wait for the climax of the romantic epic. Mere mortal men barely cut it after this.