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For someone who can read others’ thoughts, Edward Cullen sure spends a lot of time ruminating on his own. He is both the only selling point and the greatest flaw of Midnight Sun, the newest book in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga, which until very recently had ended more than a decade ago. Meyer has been sweating through this book for years, reworking it since a first draft leaked back in 2008, much to her chagrin. She calls this book her “nemesis,” says “every single word was a struggle.” And it shows. Her writing has improved substantially since Twilight was released in 2005, but her narrator—the sparkling-skinned vampire Edward—seems as world-weary as Meyer herself.
The book is not, in one sense, a new book. It’s a “companion” to the original Twilight, a retelling from Edward’s perspective rather than that of his lover, Isabella Swan. The same plot happens. The same romance. The same near-death complications. The only new element is Edward’s thoughts, and sadly, they’re not particularly fascinating.
We get little insight into the fantastic world he lives in. Instead, he spends the whole book—all 672 pages—agonizing over, first, his hatred for Bella and her intoxicating scent, and then, almost immediately after, his love for her and her humanity. He’s the poster child for love at first sight, never giving a compelling reason for why he’s so taken with Bella other than her incomprehensible goodness. All others, humans and vampires alike, pale in comparison to her grace and selflessness. She is the epitome of the “not like other girls” trope. Exhausted by the sounds of petty teenage thoughts all day, Edward is swept away by Bella’s kindness, though the only impressively kind things she does are A) treat her friends as human beings and B) show a somewhat alarming lack of self-preservation. Readers can buy that Bella is kind. But so kind as to be “something halfway between a goddess and a naiad”? Meyer never really proves it.
We are given paragraph after paragraph of Edward hating himself for his own desires. He is a monster, worse than a monster. His “dead heart” only beats for her. Blood “colors her skin” once every two or three pages, and, oh, he wants to kill her so badly. He almost does, several times over. But he also wants to save her! In fact, he is so concerned about her ludicrous clumsiness and magnetism for trouble that he justifies following her around, listening to her conversations, and watching her sleep. He hates himself for this, too, calling himself “no better” than a Peeping Tom. This reads as Meyer attempting to combat earlier criticism of Edward’s creepy tendencies, but in reality it just feels exhausting. Make a choice, Edward! Commit!
He turns into a tight ball of panic at the thought of a meteorite hitting Bella in the night. “What if I went to school tomorrow…and her seat was empty?” he thinks. “Abruptly, the risk felt unacceptable. The only way I could be positive she was safe was if there was someone in place to catch the meteorite before it could touch her.”
His hackles raise whenever his siblings so much as suggest he consider converting Bella to vampirism, though it’s clearly the only logical way to keep her safe. His argument is fair: He doesn’t want to damn her to eternity. But she wants to be a vampire. He refuses to take her wishes into account. At the thought of her dying, he envisions “decades” of pain. And he sees in Alice’s prescient visions that, one day, Bella will enter the world of the undead. But no! He shakes his head, ignoring this foresight.
Those who already loved Edward Cullen might find something compelling, even charming, in all this angst. And perhaps it’d be easier to feel that way if his thoughts didn’t drone on for so many pages. But by the time you’ve finished reading this story you’ve already read, you wonder how this man survived for more than a century with this degree of inner conflict, even before he met Bella.
An unlikeable narrator can be a clever device. But Edward wants so much to convince you to hate him that the effort backfires. You don’t love him like Bella does, nor do you think he’s the monster he claims to be. If anything, he loses the allure he held in the first book. He feels more real, more dull. Some readers will enjoy this normalization of their favorite dreamboat. Others will realize all the hype was a trick mirror.
To Meyer’s credit, she manages to take the exact same story, overwrite it, and still add some new elements of intrigue. Experiencing Edward’s interactions with his siblings firsthand does offer some of the book’s few pleasures. Alice, Emmett, and Jasper, in particular, are often more fun to read about than Edward himself. But this is still Twilight: It’s still Edward and Bella’s story. If that’s what you signed up for, then good—you’ll be pleased. But if you were hoping for breathtaking new insight into the immortal mind of your first love, you won’t find anything here but a tired man and a tired tale.
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