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.