I caved.
Yeah, I totally caved. I picked up New Moon when we went shopping today; I thought it'd be good to read it before the movie comes out. Colour me surprised. It's not bad, at least so far. Yes, the dialogue tags and the beats are still awkward and overwritten in many cases, but the rest is surprisingly fine. Granted, I'm only at the beginning, so I can't say about plotting and character development yet, but so far, so good!