Midnight Sun is the companion novel to the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer. The book was initially announced by Stephanie 10 years ago. It took her a decade to publish it, which made it a much anticipated and cringeworthy read for all twilight fans.
Midnight Sun is the retelling of the first book in the series from Edward’s point of view. The actual book is told from Bella’s perspective, while Midnight sun gives a deeper perspective and life of Edward Cullen.
To review the book in one line:
It’s too long and not a worthy read.!
I read the entire book (around 700 pages) within 4 days only because I skipped a lot of paragraphs that were similar to the actual book. I am not sure why the book had to be sooooo lengthy, as we already had an idea about the actual storyline. The story contains fragments of Edward’s life and glimpses of his past before Bella. Along with this, we can see the main scenes from twilight#1 re-told with a lengthy description. It gets annoying after a certain point to re-read everything again. It would have been great if this were reduced to only the important bits that were not a part of the actual book (Since the actual book was just 500 pages).
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Apart from the lengthy re-telling, there is the annoying element of excessive monologuing in Edward’s mind, throughout the book. Yes, we get it, the book is about Edward’s point of view. But does he have to rant about everything too much in his mind? It’s exhausting.! It’s pages and pages on what he is thinking in every situation. So, for every scene from the book#1 and the extra scenes from Edward’s life, there are a whole lot of pages dedicated to Edward’s monologue.
Next, to talk about Edward himself, I found him excessively annoying and kind of creepy. I know we all loved him when the book#1 initially came out. I was #TeamEdward all the way. But, after reading Midnight Sun, I seriously doubt my choices. Edward was an extremely possessive, and creepy guy, who should never be mistaken for a romantic boy. He would call Mike: a perv as his thoughts for Bella wasn’t the purest, but what he did was way worse.
Firstly, he would stalk her like anything. Just listening to anyone who would be close to her to know what she is doing every single second.
image copyrights @buzzfeed
Secondly, and the worst of all, he would spy on her when she was sleeping. I mean, SERIOSULY.??!!
Being in someone’s room when they are unconscious and just sitting there in one corner, looking at them while they sleep. Do I need to say more.?
image copyrights @fanpop
Although I did like Jacob in the book (Needless to say, I am #TeamJacob now). He is a sweet and a “Normal” guy. He is the only character I enjoyed in the book, no matter how small appearance he had.
I was close to DNF’ing the book after 300 pages but somehow forced myself to read it, so you don’t have to. Fortunately, there was one chapter at the near end that I enjoyed a bit. Chapter-25: Race, talks about Edward and the Cullen family racing down from the airport to find Bella when they noticed she ran off. It was the only thrilling read which made me feel a bit okay about the book.
There were a few other okay elements in the book like some of Edward’s past; Jessica’s thought – mostly being focused on hating everyone (which was quite funny); and then there’s Emmet (Ohh, I love emmet and his humor).
In general, I found the book to be a waste of time and not quite up to the mark. Since it took Stephanie 10 years to publish this, I was hoping for something better. But now I am disappointed. If I want the re-live the memories of the first book, I will prefer to read that again instead of reading the Midnight Sun.