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A review by booktrotting
Midnight Sun by Stephenie Meyer
3.0
Honestly, this gets an additional star for the sheer audacity. What an oddly ballsy move to release this properly. It's SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY pages long. What an indulgence. It's hard not to admire this.
This is Twilight from Edward's perspective, beat for beat. Now, those of us who have been through the Twilight wars know the (admittedly well-founded) criticisms well. However, I'd come around on Twilight again over the years. Sure, the age gap is gross, but I'd always been able to suspend my disbelief to an extent- maybe Edward truly was just seventeen forever, body and soul. But nope, Edward is truly a freaky little old man on the inside, for some reason referring to all of Bella's classmates as 'children' throughout the book, which kept jarringly reminding me of the weirdness of the whole thing. There's also the fact that Bella seems to be even more of a porcelain Victorian ghoul child in this, skittering about like Bambi on ice. The appeal is simply not there. I think we NEED to be in her perspective just so we don't have to experience that secondhand embarrassment viscerally from the outside.
In fact, throughout this book Stephenie Meyer seems to be hellbent on addressing all the criticisms of the original book. The justification of Edward lurking in Bella's bedroom is particularly cack-handed. This had the bizarre effect of racing past simple 'doubling down' and well into the realm of convincing me Edward truly is some kind of sinister night imp, whose love for Bella is a weird supernatural fixation. It weirdly worked for me - in the way that if you stay up too late eventually you stop feeling tired and enter into a state of energetic delirium.
See, the thing is, that Stephenie Meyer is actually a good writer. There is nothing technically wrong with the book at all - the dialogue is balanced, description well fleshed out, the pacing also works. This didn't FEEL like 750 pages to me, though the length is bafflingly self-indulgent. I found myself back in my own 13yo mindset, happy to be pulled along for the ride. It's somewhat thrilling to see a writer use her gifts not for good, but to write some of the most bizarre and captivating (not to mention viciously sexually charged) teen fiction ever written.
It occurs to me that this is probably the closest I will come in this life to experience reading a book again for the first time. It was weirdly exhilarating to see all the iconic moments play out again in a way that was at once new but familiar. I maintain that the 'vampires play baseball during storms' idea remains incredibly inspired. Would I read New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn from Edward's POV? No, absolutely not. It's highly silly. Might I go back and read the original series now? Yeah, sure.
This is Twilight from Edward's perspective, beat for beat. Now, those of us who have been through the Twilight wars know the (admittedly well-founded) criticisms well. However, I'd come around on Twilight again over the years. Sure, the age gap is gross, but I'd always been able to suspend my disbelief to an extent- maybe Edward truly was just seventeen forever, body and soul. But nope, Edward is truly a freaky little old man on the inside, for some reason referring to all of Bella's classmates as 'children' throughout the book, which kept jarringly reminding me of the weirdness of the whole thing. There's also the fact that Bella seems to be even more of a porcelain Victorian ghoul child in this, skittering about like Bambi on ice. The appeal is simply not there. I think we NEED to be in her perspective just so we don't have to experience that secondhand embarrassment viscerally from the outside.
In fact, throughout this book Stephenie Meyer seems to be hellbent on addressing all the criticisms of the original book. The justification of Edward lurking in Bella's bedroom is particularly cack-handed. This had the bizarre effect of racing past simple 'doubling down' and well into the realm of convincing me Edward truly is some kind of sinister night imp, whose love for Bella is a weird supernatural fixation. It weirdly worked for me - in the way that if you stay up too late eventually you stop feeling tired and enter into a state of energetic delirium.
See, the thing is, that Stephenie Meyer is actually a good writer. There is nothing technically wrong with the book at all - the dialogue is balanced, description well fleshed out, the pacing also works. This didn't FEEL like 750 pages to me, though the length is bafflingly self-indulgent. I found myself back in my own 13yo mindset, happy to be pulled along for the ride. It's somewhat thrilling to see a writer use her gifts not for good, but to write some of the most bizarre and captivating (not to mention viciously sexually charged) teen fiction ever written.
It occurs to me that this is probably the closest I will come in this life to experience reading a book again for the first time. It was weirdly exhilarating to see all the iconic moments play out again in a way that was at once new but familiar. I maintain that the 'vampires play baseball during storms' idea remains incredibly inspired. Would I read New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn from Edward's POV? No, absolutely not. It's highly silly. Might I go back and read the original series now? Yeah, sure.