MIDNIGHT SUN (The Twilight Saga #5) by STEPHENIE MEYER

‘Her scent hit me like a battering ram, like an exploding grenade. There was no image violent enough to encompass the force of what happened to me in that moment. Instantly, I was transformed. I was nothing close to the human I’d once been. No shreds of humanity I’d managed to cloak myself in over the years remained. I was a predator. She was my prey. There was nothing else in the whole world but that truth. I was a vampire, and she had the sweetest blood I’d smelled in more than eighty years.’

Like everyone else, we have been waiting and hoping that Midnight Sun would one day land in our eager hands after all the debacle. It’s only been like FOREVER and we worried the day would never get here. And then it did, and FOREVER was worth it. Oh was it worth it! Midnight Sun was everything we could have wished for and more, it was beyond what we could’ve dreamed of or even expected. Stephenie Meyer did an amazing thing here because, in our hearts, Midnight Sun is on a whole other level to Twilight. Gasp, yes we said that out loud, we ended up loving it so much more. It wasn’t just the fact that this was Edward’s story, it was also the emotional intensity and the quality of writing which has improved immensely.

 ‘My life was an unending, unchanging midnight. It must, by necessity, always be midnight for me. So how was it possible that the sun was rising now, in the middle of my midnight?’
‘Everything was wrong with this picture – a killer and an innocent leaning close, each basking in the presence of the other, totally at peace. It was as if we’d somehow ascended to a better world, where such impossibilities could exist.’

Edward, our first vampire love, brought all the feelings back that we experienced the first time around, but it was like falling in love all over again, falling in love with someone new. Do not go into Midnight Sun thinking it will be akin to a re-read, it is not a copy-paste or just a story rewritten. Yes, it is fundamentally Twilight, but moreover, it’s Edward’s story and the story of the Cullen’s; Carlisle, Esme, Alice, Jasper, Rosalie and Emmet.

“Give me something that will work!” I exploded. Alice cringed away from the volume. “Tell me another path! Show me how to stay away – where to go!”
‘The decades I had endured would not have been so difficult had I known what was waiting for me, that my existence was advancing toward something better than I could have imagined.’

Edwards and Bella’s love story is iconic, and whether you’ve read the books or seen the movies, you know how Twilight plays out in Bella’s words. Now, hearing their love story in Edward’s words, being in his head and feeling his inner turmoil, well it was incredibly emotional. It was everything. Sure, we felt a deep sense of nostalgia, after all, we were back where it all began, however, we experienced it with new eyes and experienced new feelings and sensations.

‘She couldn’t love me the way I loved her – such overpowering, all consuming, crushing love would probably break her fragile body.’
‘A ridiculously potent scent to demand my attention, a silent mind to enflame my curiosity, a quiet beauty to hold my eyes, a self-less soul to earn my awe.’

Our hearts ached when Edward reminisced, when his inner conflict reared its snarling head, it was heart-breaking. Edward is the eternal gentleman, the intelligent scholar, the voice of reasoning. However, as we all know, he must battle his instincts when faced with a soul mate love powerful beyond anything he could have envisaged for himself. Reliving those epically memorable moments with Bella and Edward became so much more poignant and agonisingly heartfelt. Edward always was a bit of an enigma despite everything, well now that is definitely not the case and we were in awe at the way in which Stephenie Meyer wrote his story. Midnight Sun was worth every penny we paid for it, it was a journey in familiar territory where we experienced the beauty with new eyes. A love story that transcends the passing of time it will stay with us forever.

“Do you swear you won’t leave me?” she whispered.
I took her face in my hands again, let the consuming love I felt for her fill my eyes, and lied with all the experience of a hundred years of daily deception
“I swear.”