New Moon

About New Moon

New Moon is the second novel in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga, published in 2006 by Little, Brown. The book opens with Bella Swan's eighteenth birthday — a milestone that confronts the central problem of her relationship with Edward Cullen: she is aging and he is not. When a small accident at a birthday party demonstrates the danger she represents to the Cullen family and the danger they represent to her, Edward makes a decision that destroys Bella's world: he tells her he doesn't love her and leaves Forks forever.

The novel's first half is among the more structurally unusual in mainstream YA fiction: Bella enters a months-long period of numbness that Meyer renders literally, with chapter headers giving only the month — October. November. December. January. — to convey the passage of time in which nothing is happening because Bella cannot function. The recovery begins when she discovers that adrenaline-inducing activities trigger auditory hallucinations of Edward's voice, and she begins taking increasingly dangerous risks to hear him.

This brings her back into contact with Jacob Black, her childhood friend from the Quileute reservation at La Push, who becomes central to the second half of the novel. As Bella and Jacob's friendship deepens, Jacob's people reveal a secret of their own — one that puts him and the Cullen family on opposing sides of an ancient feud.

Jacob and the Love Triangle

New Moon establishes the three-way tension that drives the rest of the series. Where Edward is cold, formal, and preoccupied with danger and restraint, Jacob is warm, present, and uncomplicated in his affection for Bella. Meyer uses this contrast deliberately: Jacob represents a version of ordinary life that is available to Bella if she chooses it, while Edward represents the extraordinary — and terrifying — alternative. The "Team Edward / Team Jacob" cultural divide the series generated emerged directly from this dynamic.

The novel also expands the world significantly, introducing the Volturi — an ancient vampire ruling body based in Volterra, Italy — whose role in the saga becomes more prominent in subsequent volumes.

Why the Series Has Been Challenged

New Moon, like the rest of the Twilight Saga, has been challenged in school libraries primarily for its romantic content, its occult themes (vampires and werewolves as central characters), and concerns from some religious communities about the series' treatment of supernatural beings. Some challenges have targeted the series' depiction of dangerous relationships as romantic. The ALA has documented challenges to the Twilight books in multiple states.