The Skin Of A Killer

I recently finished reading Midnight Sun by Stephenie Meyer. This is book #5 in the Twilight Saga.

POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT

  Rating: 3/5 stars

"When Edward Cullen and Bella Swan met in Twilight, an iconic love story was born. But until now, fans have heard only Bella's side of the story. At last, readers can experience Edward's version in the long-awaited companion novel, Midnight Sun.

This unforgettable tale as told through Edward's eyes takes on a new and decidedly dark twist. Meeting Bella is both the most unnerving and intriguing event he has experienced in all his years as a vampire. As we learn more fascinating details about Edward's past and the complexity of his inner thoughts, we understand why this is the defining struggle of his life. How can he justify following his heart if it means leading Bella into danger?"

This book isn't perfect, and I didn't expect it to be. It has many of the major criticized flaws of Twilight, in terms of instalove and questionable romance.  This book was written for the Twihards. It was written for everyone who had been eagerly awaiting this installment for over a decade.

That said, Midnight Sun is 'technically' better than Twilight. Meyer's prose has grown and greatly improved in the past 15 years since Twilight first came out. Many of us have laughed at infamous Twilight lines such as: “Aro laughed. "Ha ha ha," he giggled.” (Which is a misquote, by the way. It's actually: “Aro started to laugh. “Ha ha ha,” he chuckled.” In New Moon, chapter 21. Look it up!)

When it comes to plot, this is literally the same as Twilight. Don't go expecting a new story because you won't get one. What you will get is a new version of it with far more detail and development than we see in the original novel. Meyer took the opportunity in this book to expand and develop a lot of things that were left vague before, and I appreciate that. The vampire world seems bigger here, the characters seem like they could, with some effort, be real people!

Character-wise, I really liked this book and consider it a good contribution to the Twilight Saga. He is still a vampire stalker, but he is also shockingly self-aware and not nearly as perfect as Bella thinks. Seeing him through Bella's POV made Edward seem distant and otherworldly and entirely without flaw. Seeing his mind shows he's a flawed, complex mess of a person. It makes him a bit more human than before.

Shockingly, the biggest surprise for me in this book was Bella herself, as she too appears more human in this book than in Twilight. Don't get me wrong, Bella is still the most special of all special snowflakes, but through Edward's eyes, you see she actually has a personality. There are conversations between the two characters that are only alluded to and skipped over in Twilight, which were fully fleshed out in this book. Perhaps it's because, in Twilight, Bella was too infatuated with Edward to pay attention to small, trivial conversations. In Midnight Sun, Edward is so infatuated with Bella that he considers all those trivial conversations vital to her character. Either way, Bella's personality, her likes, and dislikes, get explored here in a way that wasn't in the original novel. It makes her less bland.

All the other characters are also shown in greater depth in this book, mostly, the Cullen clan. This is because Edward can read their minds and therefore see their true selves and hidden motives, while Bella's POV is blinded by their beauty and perceived perfection. Emmett was my favorite because he was the only one aware of the fact that Edward was clearly crazy.

I will say this though, it sucks that all the human characters lowkey suck. I mean, they sucked in Twilight too, we just didn't realize how much. All of Bella's "friends" are lying, jealous, horrible people and it sucks that Meyer chose to portray them like that for the sake of making Bella appear even more special. Even Rosalie, who has a genuinely horrifying, tragic backstory of being used and abused and left for dead, is reduced to a horrible, jealous mean girl, and I didn't like that. Rosalie deserves her own story to be told because none so far have done her justice. 

In the end, this book was good and I highly recommend it to any Twilight fan. Keep in mind that this is literally the plot of the original Twilight. Don't expect anything new or innovative, just a fresh perspective. That said, I promise you, this perspective will not disappoint.

Still, I must admit, there were points in which the book felt overly long. I kept waiting for certain things to happen and would get annoyed when I realized how early on in the story I still was, despite having read so many pages. It’s about twice the word length of the original novel! But, I attribute the annoyance to knowing all the major plot points from Twilight. I was waiting for things to occur, waiting for my favorite scenes to come up, and waiting, finally, for the action to happen.

Check out Midnight Sun, and decide which side of Twilight you prefer, Bella's or Edwards.

Happy Reading :)