Life and Death - Stephenie Meyer

Life and Death by Stephenie Meyer
Series: Twilight #5 
Published on October 6, 2015 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers 

Celebrate the tenth anniversary of Twilight! This special double-feature book includes the classic novel, Twilight, and a bold and surprising reimagining, Life and Death, by Stephenie Meyer.

Packaged as an oversize, jacketed hardcover “flip book,” this edition features nearly 400 pages of new content as well as exquisite new back cover art. Readers will relish experiencing the deeply romantic and extraordinarily suspenseful love story of Bella and Edward through fresh eyes.

Twilight has enraptured millions of readers since its first publication in 2005 and has become a modern classic, redefining genres within young adult literature and inspiring a phenomenon that has had readers yearning for more. The novel was a #1 New York Times bestseller, a #1 USA Today bestseller, a Time magazine Best Young Adult Book of All Time, an NPR Best-Ever Teen Novel, and a New York Times Editor’s Choice. The Twilight Saga, which also includes New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn, The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella, and The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide, has sold nearly 155 million copies worldwide.

I was extremely surprised when I heard about this book, I thought Twilight was over and buried we already got the series completed, a short story from a secondary character and all those movies but them, on the tenth anniversary Meyer completely surprised me with this announcement and it was a non brainier that I was going to read this. Back on 2008 I was a hard core Twilight fan, defending it from all the bad critics it got when the movies came out and reading these books over and over, they were my comfort when I was between 14-16, Edward was my dream boyfriend and this was series responsible to open the amazing world of YA for me.

So yeah, I had to read this book but it didn't really lived up to my expectations. Before I started reading it I already had see and read some bad reviews but I was expecting to love it anyway, mostly due to nostalgic feelings than by the story itself, I mean I knew I wasn't gonna be blow away by it since it was mostly the same story but still, I was hoping to relieve the attachment that I had created to this world so many years before, unfortunately this didn't happened.

My first problem with it was the fact that this is basically 99.9% of the same book, so yeah I knew it was the same story but OH MY GOD COULD YOU JUST AT LEAST TRY TO NOT CONTROL+C CONTROL+V SO MUCH???????? It was REALLY, REALLY hard to picture Beau and Edythe on my head when I could hear was the same lines from Bella and Edward, you can totally take the same bases to create a new story but you CAN'T just change the pronouns in a story and say these are new characters, because they weren't! They're the same fucking thing, on the same fucking story, passing through the same fucking situations and saying the same fucking sentences, this isn't reimagining anything. Maybe I went into this expecting to much, because I mean it's said that it was the same story but only switched genders, I read that on the letter/thing Meyer wrote at the start of the story but still in my head I was expecting a little bit more of changes, not in the story and facts itself but on the personality of those involved on it.

And I'm really pissed thinking about it you know, because if Meyer wanted to wrote something "new" on the Twilight world showing that Bella wasn't a damsel in distress as she said but a human in distress them why not write a short story them about Beau and Edythe? Or take a secondary female vampire of the series and create a romantic story for her? Or even take that female werewolf from the pack of Jacob and create a boy for her? Like seriously, 100 pages of a new work and this could have gone much better in showing what she wanted, without having copied 400+ pages of Twilight and just switching pronouns, it would have been so much more satisfying, she showed that on The Short Second Live of Bree Tanner, it was short and it still was a good read that made me care for Bree while reading it.

Also, she totally failed on her task to show that her books weren't sexist when she took the scene of attempted rape on Bella/Beau and when she totally changed the rape scene from Rosalie/Royal, breaking news guys are raped and sexual assaulted too, so there wasn't a good enough reason to make these changes. The writing continues the same, since it's basically the same narrative, still full of unnecessary information about Beau and Charlie diet and full of chopped sentences. The only big change is the ending, which it was changed to make this only one book and not a series, but I really didn't get what she tried to accomplish with the info dumping about the vampire and werewolf mythology, I mean I'm pretty sure that if you're gonna read this one you already read the rest of the series or at least saw the movies, it was completely unnecessary to have that part since it only showed how rushed this was done and it didn't really added to anything in the story.

Overall this was a disappointment, can't say I wasn't warned before but as a Twilight fan I just had to read this one and see for myself. I'm sad to say it didn't added anything to the world of vampires and werewolves that we already knew, it something it only took some of my enjoyment when thinking about this beloved series and made me agree with some hatters about the problems these books portrait. Honestly, if you're a fan of the series you will probably want to read this anyway but my recommendation is: just re-read your favorite book of the original series or watch your favorite movie of it and be happy with the nostalgic feels.