Unlike many people I know, mostly women for some reason, I didn't go to a August 2nd midnight release party for Stephenie Meyer's latest book, "Breaking Dawn". No, I just pre-ordered it on Amazon and checked for its arrival every day starting on August 2nd. It didn't arrive until the 6th or 7th, those jerks!

This is the fourth book in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series and it apparently ends the series as we know it. Meyer has hinted we may see some followup books that may repeat the stories in the previous books, but from a different character's perspective. I think the soil is fertile also for future books about other characters from the stories.

So, I liked this book. I think I could have liked it a lot more, but after three amazing, best-selling novels, my theory is Stephenie Meyer knew she didn't have to work that hard. As a result of her laziness, the story isn't as imaginative as the first three and the writing isn't as rich.

That being said, I have to admit Stephenie Meyer could write 750 pages of Bella Swan walking alone on a dirt road thinking to herself and I'd just lap it all up with glee. For the most part, I love the characters in the Twilight series, especially Bella, and could tolerate a lot of stuff as long as Stephenie Meyer writes about Bella.

A couple days after the book was released, my wife told me that one of her coworkers told her they'd seen where someone had fashioned a message using plastic cups in the chain link fencing on a highway overpass that read "Bella dies!"

Well, that kind of spoiled it for me!

This being a vampire story, however, death isn't necessarily the end of a character's story. While I'm sure the sight of that plastic cup message caused a lot of people's hearts to skip a beat, I don't think it's really that big of a spoiler.

The Twilight series is aimed at young adults, but "Breaking Dawn" is definitely more of an adult book. than your standard young adult novel. While the adult themes are vague and lacking in the details you might find in a trashy paperback romance novel, this probably isn't a book I'd recommend to anyone under 15.

That being said, I think Stephenie did a marvelous job of writing more mature material without necessarily offending too many of her virtue-obsessed readers (Meyer is Mormon and has a significant Mormon readership).

There were a few points in the book where I found myself closing the book and mouthing "Holy ****!" because I couldn't believe what I had just read. While some of the other reviews I've read indicated they thought the story was very predictable, I guess I fell right into it and lapped it up so much I didn't see what others plainly saw coming.

I didn't like what happens to Jacob in this book, but I'm not sure what Meyer could have done differently. Maybe she could have let him have what he wanted (Bella) and then kill him. Yeah! No, I can't see her doing that.

I also didn't like the way Charlie was handled. It seemed... too easy.

The "monsters" in "Breaking Dawn" seemed a lot less frightning, with a couple exceptions, than in the previous books and my theory on that goes back to Meyer's unfortunate laziness. Just about every monster-character seems to embody civility and control, unlike in previous stories. That is a bit of a let-down because I found the contrast of behavior between the monsters, the humans, and the exceptional monsters to be a major component of the stories. In Breaking Dawn, not so much. Even the amazing, spectacular, "monstrous" things that happen to Bella are conveniently downplayed and controlled like they're no big deal.