I wasn’t planning on doing review of sorts for Twilight: Midnight Sun, the story of Twilight from Edward Cullen’s perspective, simply because I didn’t expect it to be any more than a fun, brainless, read. Something like the rest of the Twilight books: easily digesteable prose, dubious morality, not ground breaking, but not bad, per se. I really hadn’t expected to involve my brain into the process.

But, even with those low expectations, I had sort of expected Midnight Sun to be, like, a functional story that could stand on its own? What I mean by this is that Midnight Sun is exactly what I described it as: Twilight rom Edward Cullens perspective. And literally that’s it. We are treated to his though process, wich I really wish we weren’t because it goes on and on and on and in cirkels and on, etc, during the exact same plotpoints that happened in Twilight. The problem with this is that Edward isn’t nearly an interesting enough character that this premise can carry a plot; a plot most of us have already read, might I add. I frankly don’t really care about what his thoughts were when, for example, he saved Bella from a car accident, because his thought process has been included in Bella’s perspective of Twilight. What could’ve made this interesting is to show a part of Edward readers aren’t familiar with. Interactions with his family, what his actual life was like, etc. But, interactions with his siblings are far between and mostly just small exchanges of thought between him and Alice. Rosalie is still stereotyped as a frigid bitch; Emmett and Jasper are kind of there to provide side commentary.

An excellent example of the lack of Edward’s ability to carry a scene on his own is the end of the first chapter and the beginning of the second chapter. At the end of chapter 1 Edward has met Bella in their biology class. He’s severely affected by her and fears he’ll kill her if he stays in Forks. So he decides to run away to Alaska. Chapter 2 opens up with a couple paragraphs of conversation between him and Tanya, a friend from the Denali clan in Alaska, after which he immediately decides to go back to Forks. What happened while he was in Alaska, what was the journey that got him to conclude that it was safe to go back to Forks? This is all part of his story and something that hadn’t already been touched on in Twilight, but it’s not included in Midnight Sun because, honestly, I don’t think Meyer really cares enough about Edward as a character to put him in a scene that is not connected to Bella in some way. I mean, despite all the critisizing of Bella’s character by critics and fans, she had a personality and interests beyond Edward at the start of her story (I mean, not for long. But it was there for, like, a hot second). Edward only exists in function of his later relationship with Bella.

In a way, Midnight Sun oddly reads like fanfiction, because Meyer offers no exclusive insight as the creator of these characters. What I mean by this is that the prompt of Twilight, but from Edwards perspective is something you could’ve easily found on AO3, as a fun aside someone did in between writing their college essays. It’s not something I’d pay 20€ for.

Now, to be clear, this is all I have gathered from the first 3 chapters of the book. Because I’ve basically read all of this before and the prose thus far is primarily just long blocks of Edwards back and forth on his opinion on Bella, it’s a bit tedious to read.

I don’t know if I’ll follow this up with a review of the following chapters. I have the feeling that all of the opinions I have written down now will continue throughout the book.