Author: Stephenie Meyer
Published: June 2009
Publisher: Little Brown Books for Young Readers
Series: Twilight series (companion book)
178 pages (hardcover)
First of all, I feel like I need to clarify my stance on the Twilight series of books. I loved Twilight, I liked New Moon and Eclipse (for the most part; Eclipse a little less) and I hated Breaking Dawn. I tell people I have a love-hate thing with Twilight, to keep it ‘simple’. Anyway, I wasn’t planning on reading this short novella, this companion piece to the series. For one, I was not interested in Bree Tanner. I barely remembered who she was, since she was the most minor of characters that popped up in Eclipse. Secondly, Breaking Dawn left a very bad taste in my mouth and I didn’t have much of a desire to continue the series in any way. However, when I saw this at the library, morbid curiosity got the better of me.
Bree is a newborn vampire created as a part of Victoria’s vampire army in book three, Eclipse. Bree’s only been a vampire for 3 months and has been doing her best to not attract attention or trouble in her coven of vampires, all of whom are newborns. Newborn vampires are driven by their thirst for human blood and seem to be predisposed to violence and havoc. Luckily for Bree, she manages to keep her vampire instincts controlled and uses fellow vampire Fred (who has the gift of making people not notice him or those around him; being invisible without actually turning invisible) to survive in her coven. She and her only friend in the coven, Diego, are becoming suspicious of their “boss” Riley and their creator, Victoria but are too afraid to really do anything about it.
The problem with this story is that it isn’t interesting. To quote my friend, “This book is, in a word, boring.” Bree isn’t a character anybody cared or even remembered about. The first half of the book was just plain boring. Bree meets Diego and they became super close friends in less than a day’s time, despite Bree telling the reader all about how guarded you have to be as a newborn vampire. Just because she got some good vibes with this Diego, she’s suddenly forming a BFF club with him (literally – I’m not making this up). Oh, and Bree falls in love with Diego (or at least a very big crush), and he with her. It isn’t stated, but it’s heavily implied. I didn’t feel as if a romantic relationship between them fit in this book at all. Anyway, they get trapped in an underwater cave at one point, trying to escape the sun, share some details about their human past and their suspicions about Riley. It was very ho-hum.
The second half of the book described the climatic fight that occurred in Eclipse, a fight readers already read about and know about, so there is nothing really new at all. Granted, it was through a different set of eyes (Bree’s), but Bree wasn’t even in the fight and spent most of her time hiding. (And I had to wonder how she didn’t see any werewolves in the fight. It’s been a long time since I last read Eclipse, but I did see the movie recently and I swear Bree was there while the werewolves were ripping apart the newborns. The werewolves are the best part too! (I’m on Team Werewolves, by the way)). At the very end, I found a disconnect between Bree’s narrator voice and her dialogue. The dialogue is straight from Eclipse and it just doesn’t match the Bree that we’ve become accustomed to during the course of the novel. For a book that is supposed to individualize Bree as a character, her narrating voice is actually exactly the same as Bella’s.
Only a Twilight fan could read this book, and even then, I think many Twilight fans will find themselves disappointed with this novel. No familiar characters (not until the very end, and it’s all scenes we’ve read about before), and just a recycling of plot for the most part. I understand that it’s supposed to tell Bree’s life up to the point she was killed — if you’ve read Eclipse, you already know she’s going to die by the end — but still, there are so many ways of going about this without simply recycling the scenes.
Overall, this book felt very underwhelming. It almost felt like it was written quickly and rushed to the printers to make a quick buck while everyone’s still in the Twilight frenzy. I needed something brilliant in the Twilight series to bring me back into it after the disaster that was Breaking Dawn but I am made to stay away from it all even more.
PS. Last thing – I was trying to figure out who the “red headed Cullen” was that was described in the book. Only until Bree mentioned him being a mind reader, I realized it was Edward. WTF Edward is not a redhead, or has Meyer forgotten what her characters look like??
My Rating: 1/5
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