After twelve long years, Twilight fans finally have their copy of Midnight Sun.  If you don’t want spoilers, I suggest you stop reading now.  After plowing through the almost seven hundred page book filled with Edward’s thoughts and feelings about his relationship with Bella, I have a few thoughts and feelings of my own.

First of all, I know the entire point of the book is to explore how Edward reacted to falling in love with a human, but the love story was not what I enjoyed most out of this book.  This might be because I knew how their story ended—with a happily ever after for all of eternity—but I found myself more excited about the little details that Edward’s perspective gave us about the every day life of a vampire.

While it is common knowledge that Edward wanted to kill Bella for a taste of her blood, I think readers often forget how close Edward was to actually killing her. Through Bella’s perspective, the fact that she is almost murdered in the middle of her biology class is basically brushed off as a minor detail.  In Midnight Sun, however, Edward’s lapse of control around Bella takes center stage.  Edward, who has been a practicing ‘vegetarian’ for well over one hundred years is suddenly thrown into a frenzy when he smells Bella’s blood.  This is something that makes him question his control and sends him spiraling into an identity crisis. That, combined with the fact that he is unable to hear her thoughts, makes him obsessive over Bella Swan.  Eventually he finds it hard to stay away from the human girl and thus starts to build a relationship with her.

Edward’s family is not supportive of his choice to let a human in on their secret. So much so that Jasper and Rosalie think the best course of action would be to kill Bella before she would have a change to expose their family’s secret.  For most vampires, the thought of killing a human to keep their secret would mean nothing and Edward’s possessive reaction imminently worries his family.  Again, he sees some of the Cullen’s disapproval of Edward’s infatuation with a human through Bella’s perspective. Though, through Edward’s perspective, we see an entirely different side of the Cullen family—the side that is willing to kill to keep their secret. This is almost a complete one-eighty from what Bella sees which is the vampire family that chooses to preserve human life.

Seeing the Cullen family through Edward’s eyes puts their choices under a new microscope.  Throughout the entire Twilight Saga, readers become familiar with Jasper’s extra vampire ability—feeling and manipulating the emotions of those around him.  Bella’s emotions are usually the ones he ends up manipulating—using his gift to calm her down after a stressful event, for example.  She sees the good side of his extra power, even going as far as to tell J. Jenks in Breaking Dawn that Jasper is a calming presence.

In Midnight Sun however, we get to see it used as a war tool.  Jasper uses his extra senses to keep James from noticing Bella immediately in the clearing. This is effective until the wind blows her scent in his direction. This is one of the things that stood out to me most while reading. I don’t know why it shocked me so much to think that Jasper would have found a way to use his power defensively considering what we know of his past. However, it was hard for me to wrap my mind around at first because when I think of his power I envision the calming influence that Bella sees. Edward doesn’t see his brother that way at all.  Perhaps it’s because he has an inside look of Jasper’s time with the newborn armies through his memories, but he is very aware of how dangerous his newest brother is. Edward goes as far as to call him a “forgotten God of war” and “more durable than most.”  This is a side of him we only get a glimpse of through Bella’s perspective.

Readers are also shown a new side of Carlisle Cullen.  Edward puts his adoptive father on a pedestal and not without cause. His compassionate nature made it possible for him to find a new lifestyle to spare human life and help save human lives as a doctor.   But, in Midnight Sun we see that even Carlisle has limits to his compassion. Twilight fans will remember the scene when Edward saves Bella from the rapists in Port Angeles but don’t know the consequences that the man faced after.

Edward stays true to his words and doesn’t go back to punish them, Carlisle however makes no promise to leave them be.  In true Carlisle fashion he doesn’t actually kill anyone but, he does beat him to a pulp and places them outside a police station.  This scene shocked me. Carlisle is usually portrayed by both Bella and Edward as the kindest, most compassionate vampire or human in the entire series, so this seemed out of character.  I totally agree with his reasoning—that man was a bad person and would hurt other women if left to his own devices. I would have understood if Edward had punished the offenders but Carlisle choosing to resolve this issue with violence really helped illustrate that while he may be the most compassionate, he is still a vampire at his core.

Overall, I loved reading from Edward Cullen’s perspective.  Hearing his thoughts and feelings towards not only his relationship with Bella and his family, but also his perception of his identity as a vampire and how that impacts those relationships changes the story we thought we knew.  Through Edward’s eyes we see things that Bella never knew about, even though they were happening because of her or right under her nose.  Midnight Sun challenges what we thought we knew about all our favorite characters and their story.  I highly recommended reading it.

Article written by Marissa Mayfield.