When her mother gets remarried, Bella moves in with her father, Charlie, who lives in a small town on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, where it rains nearly all the time. There she meets Edward, a strange and gorgeous boy from a strange and gorgeous family, and soon she has fallen madly in love with him. She also discovers that he and his family are vampires, and this bothers her not at all. It bothers Edward, though; even though they had long ago sworn off human blood in favor of animal predators, he still worries for her safety, both with him and with his family, who control their lust for human blood only by willpower.

In this sequel to Twilight, Bella reluctantly attends a birthday party in her honor given by her beloved Edward's vampire family, the Cullens. But when she accidentally gets a paper cut and members of the family have to be forcibly restrained, Edward decides that he is simply too dangerous to her, and that the only solution is to leave her. With the Cullens gone, Bella sinks into abject misery and depression for months. Her only solace is her growing friendship with Jacob. She also discovers that when she does risky and dangerous things she can hear Edward's voice in her head, so she takes up motorcycling and cliff diving. But Jacob is going through some horrifying changes of his own, and Bella is being stalked by another vampire out for revenge against Edward.