Rarely was a story told from different perspective justified, but I dare say Twilight/Midnight Sun is one of them.

As much as I enjoy reading Twilight, it does have problems with the pacing. For the most part, nothing happened except for Bella swooning over Edward, and there's a limit of Edward's Greek god-like appearance description one could endure. The action is a bit lacking, as things tend to happen without the presence of Bella (under acceptable guise of the vampires protecting the fragile human). Also, let's be honest, without the vampires, Bella's life is as dull as it can be. It's Edward and the vampires that makes the story interesting...and there are important parts that needs exploring, like why in the world would Edward be attracted to the 'plain' Bella? Midnight Sun attempts to explain exactly that.

Edward's mind was written in brooding purplish prose, meant to reflect the era when the character was still a human. Apparently vampires' thinking pattern is frozen in the era they were turned, so you won't catch Edward speaking in Gen-Z lingo, ever. I kind of wish it was written in Carlisle's (born in 1640) perspective instead, because now I am curious whether he would think in something akin to Shakespearian English, but I digress.

(If anyone has links to fanfiction where Carlisle speaks in Shakespearian English, please hit me up)

I appreciate that Midnight Sun offers glimpses of what happened behind Bella's back. I particularly enjoyed the part when Edward was reminiscing about his days as "younger" vampire, relationship with his adopted family, and how the introduction of Bella would affect their family dynamics. Much of the storyline is spent on repeating how he think he was dangerous to Bella, though, and after a few pages describing that, WE GET IT, EDWARD, WE GET IT COMPLETELY. It's painful to read, but it is somewhat justified because as a vampire, Edward's state of mind is frozen as a 17 years old. Teenagers tend to experience overflowing emotion and fixate on an object of affection...just imagine what happened when your brain remained a teenager for 50++years, and you're incapable of maturing your prefrontal cortex to get your shit together.

It must be evident that I read Midnight Sun through rose-colored glasses, and I was prepared to give it 4 stars...until I see how it treated Rosalie's character. To be honest, Rosalie is one of my favourite character in Twilight; Rosalie's backstory in Eclipse provided more layers to her, and as Edward is a mind-reader, surely we get to see more depth of Rosalie? But no, Stephenie Meyer opted to highlight Rosalie's vanity and jealousy. Well, if you are as gorgeous as she was described, you could not help being vain, and jealousy in itself is not a bad motive, but...Rosalie being jealous because Edward choose Bella instead of her? Of all the reasons to dislike Bella, one of which has been detailed in Eclipse and become her main motive in Breaking Dawn, Stephenie Meyer chose that as the main reason of her jealousy? Good Lord, no, I cannot accept this.

I get that in many ways, Rosalie was set as the opposite of Bella. Their life choices are different. Her physical beauty is emphasized while Bella's is downplayed. However, I don't think Rosalie need to be pictured as that shallow only to raise Bella in Edward's eyes. We don't need to pit women against each other to compete for a man's affection, thank you very much.

To avenge Rosalie, I nicked one star from my original rating.

#RosalieDeservesBetter