Warning: Book reviews contain some (mild) spoilers.
It seems appropriate that my first review on this blog is about a Twilight book. The Twilight series was my introduction to the world of Young Adult (YA) literature. (Unfortunately, I missed the whole Harry Potter phenomenon by a few years… It was most popular while I was in high school, when the only books I had time to read were school-related.)
How and why I started reading Twilight is a subject for another post, but suffice to say I’ve read all the books. And yes, I enjoyed them. The pros and cons of the series have been discussed to death on the Internet and elsewhere, so I won’t get into that here. I will say that I believe Stephenie Meyer’s strength as a writer lies in her ability to tell a page-turning story, as well as her gift for creating characters that inspire universal devotion from her fans. (And if you don’t know what I mean by “universal devotion,” I will be forced to wonder if you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years.)
So while I don’t consider myself a rabid Twilight fan, I was intrigued when I heard about the release of an Eclipse novella. The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner is about a character that has literally ten pages of “screen-time” in Eclipse, the third book in the Twilight series. Everyone who read that book already knows what happens to Bree. (Hint: There’s a reason the title includes the word “short.”) I was curious to see what Stephenie Meyer would do with a character that not only seemed so minor, but so different from the main characters of Twilight. After all, Bree is a vampire in the more traditional sense—she’s a killer, and her ending is an unhappy one.
In my opinion, you do need to read Eclipse to understand this novella. At the very least, it will enrich your reading experience, especially in the last fourth of the book, when Bree’s experiences and those of the Cullens begin to intersect. If you only read the novella, you won’t understand some of the things Bree sees and hears (particularly Jacob’s injury). Additionally, I felt that a considerable part of the enjoyment of the book was being able to see familiar characters through a stranger’s eyes.
That said, The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner is a compelling story in its own right. Stephenie Meyer has a gift for imagining life from each of her characters’ point of view, even the most minor characters like Bree. And as always, she manages to create intriguing characters in unexpected settings. Bree’s interactions with her fellow newborns, Diego and Fred, surprised me with their simple charm. Compared to the other Twilight books, this is an understated, subtle little story… In my opinion, Stephenie Meyer’s writing style has matured well. The romance (and yes, of course there is romance) is so subtle that if it weren’t for a brief kiss or two, you could blink and miss it.
