Okay, please know I LOVED Twilight when I was younger. I’ve read the main books several times and enjoyed them each time (probably 15 years ago). And I think the books are better than the movies—honestly the movies make it so much easier to make fun of this series.

I’m finally getting around to reading this retelling from Edward’s POV and giving it 2 stars for a few reasons…(1) it took me forever to slug through it. At no point did I experience the “can’t put this down” feeling that I’ve had with the other fantasy books I’ve read lately. (2) I did not feel like this book needed to be as long as it is. I didn’t learn anything more about Edward’s character than I already knew from Twilight. His self-loathing internal dialog was so repetitive and predictable, it drove me crazy. (3) I don’t remember if she does this in the other books, but Meyer’s writing style in this one breaks up dialog and conversations between characters with *pages* of internal thought. So much so that I would often times forget that she was in the middle of an actual conversation between two characters and I had to go backwards to remember how it started. Not a fan. (4) Having re-experienced this story as an adult, Bella is not a great representation of a strong female lead. She’s kind of pathetic actually. And Edward is way more of a controlling ass than I remembered him being.

That’s the part that was most interesting for me—the fact that I’ve grown as a human and reader in the last 17 years and can recognize his character flaws more than I did when I was 18-19 years old myself. But I can also recognize now how much Bella does not stand up for herself, which just kind of ruins it for me. I don’t have a lot of patience for female leads without any real spine.

Anyways, is the book fine for young adults? Yeah probably. Would I recommend it? Nah. Probably not for any age group, mostly just knowing what else is out there that is so much better.