Meyer’s trilogy seethes with the archetypal tumult of star-crossed passions, in which the supernatural element serves as heady spice. As Bella and her vampire swain channel Romeo and Juliet, Heathcliff and Cathy, their audience falls under the spell of a love that is not only undying, but undead. Meyer writes with a PG-13 sensibility: in the earlier books, she skirted clinches that would put an unmarried girl afoul of the censors. Besides, Bella was too busy figuring out her suitors’ species to focus on miscegenation.  But as “Eclipse” begins, both Edward’s and Jake’s exotic lineages have been exposed, and the heat on their rivalrous courtship has been cranked up to “broil.” As Bella sizzles with longing, agonizing over the Right Monster, Edward distracts her with the news that a horde of “bad” vampires, seeking to avenge the death of one of their own, may be hustling toward Forks, fangs drawn. This possibility does not endear her to the local werewolf community.  Internecine warfare looms, but who could care, when what you really want to know is: Will Bella and Edward get married after they graduate from high school — given that once their vampire vows are solemnized, Edward will drain her blood and transform her into a night-wandering predator? Or will Bella choose Jake, and raise a litter of dark-haired werepups?  Sucked into the girl-wants-boy, girl-ought-to-get-boy paradigm, readers find themselves rooting against reason for Bella’s heart’s desire: a speedy, violent demise, followed by bliss with Edward, 4ever. Hot-blooded Bella doesn’t want to wait for the preacher; but Edward — a vampire second, a gentleman first — refuses to grant his favors until the two of them are legally wed. As he puts it, “A hundred years from now, when you’ve gained enough perspective to really appreciate the answer, I will explain it to you.”  But to Bella, marriage at 18 presents a far more daunting hurdle than the kiss of death. “I tried to imagine telling my parents that I was getting married this summer,” she reflects. “It would be easier to tell them I was becoming a vampire.” For her, the waiting is the hardest part. She met Edward when they were both 17, but in “Eclipse,” more than a year later, she’s 18. Frozen at the age he was when vampiredom was thrust upon him (in the great influenza epidemic of 1918), Edward is now eternally a younger man, while Jake’s 16 and holding. “Am I the only one who has to get old?” Bella wails. “Where’s the justice?”  What subversive creature could dream up a universe in which vampires and werewolves put marriage ahead of carnage on their to-do lists? The answer, of course, is a writer of steamy occult romantic thrillers who happens to be a wholesome Mormon mother of three — a category of one, solely occupied by Stephenie Meyer. The author is well aware of the jarring contradiction between her real and imaginary lives. On stepheniemeyer.com, her Web site (created to satisfy her ravening fans), she admits, “I have been asked more than once, ‘What’s a nice Mormon girl like you doing writing about vampires?’ ” Lucky for her, while her religion’s teachings may frown on caffeine and alcohol for humans, the Word of Wisdom has a flexible attitude toward human blood for monsters; and there’s no ban on big love in the mythical world.  629 pp. Megan Tingley Books/Little, Brown & Company. $18.99. (Ages 12 and up)  Liesl Schillinger is a regular contributor to the Book Review.
Stephenie Meyer teases her readers with the romantic confusion of a normal (well ... human, at any rate) girl who’s being pursued by a wolf-teen and is in love with a Nosferatu.