A review by startjpw23
Midnight Sun by Stephenie Meyer

dark emotional slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

This book is a Twilight retelling from Edward's perspective. It is told in first person. Edward is a vampire who is part of a vampire family who get their sustenance from animal blood instead of human blood. They are not a family by blood, but by their shared desire to not harm humans. To pass as human, Edward and his sisters and brothers attend a local high school. Early in the book, Bella, a teen girl, moves into town (Forks, Washington) to stay with her father who is the local sheriff. Bella starts as a student at the high school that Edward and his siblings also attend. When Bella joins a class that Edward is in, Edward has a strong reaction to the aroma of Bella's blood. It triggers an intense hunger reflex in him. The story goes on from there. I read and loved the Twilight books and movies when they came out. I recognized that they weren't the most well written books. Despite this, I found them very entertaining. I enjoyed the first half of Midnight Sun fairly well. Then Edward took Bella to a field in the wilderness to show her an aspect of vampires. This part of the story almost put me to sleep. I mean this literally. I had trouble keeping my eyes open. There was so much poorly written dialog. And the dialog kept on going and going. I had difficulty getting through the rest of the book. When Edward and Bella weren't endlessly talking in cringey dialog, we read what Edward was thinking. What he was thinking a lot of the time is what an awful being he was. I can't recall ever reading a character who was as self-loathing as Edward. There is actually a decent story in this book. But there is not 662 pages (the length of the book) of story. The premise of a different type vampires is clever. I liked the characters and their variety, both the vampires and the humans in Edwards and Bella's orbit. The plot is decent. A lot of the dialog and Edwards inner monologue should have been cut out. The other issue is that most people who read this book have previously read Twilight. I knew generally what was going to happen. I can only recommend this book to people who read Twilight recently and liked it. They would be okay with the poor writing. And to people who know nothing of Twilight. There would be a lot of thrills for the second group. They wouldn't know what was going to happen. Perhaps they could overlook the poor writing. 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings