Ahhhhhh nostalgia. This book felt like a hefty dose of comfort, taking me back to my teenage-self who read the Twilight series repeatedly for a few years. I loved those books so much, and although in hindsight they’re not the best books in the world, they’re what got me into reading fantasy, and for that I’m thankful.

Midnight Sun is basically the first Twilight book (not all three, like I originally thought from the size of it), but written from Edward’s perspective, not Bella’s.

Because of that, it felt hugely familiar; the same story but from a different angle. It did, however, answer a lot of questions that I had when reading Twilight, and it shone some insight onto some of the strange behaviour that you kind of just accept in those original books. It also gives you a lot more backstory and allows you to see some of the torment that Edward’s character goes through.

That said, the book felt about 50% longer than it needed to be, and when I got to about two-thirds of the way through I was kind of just willing it to finish. I enjoyed that we were inside Edward’s head, but boy can he go on and on and on.

I think what I may have appreciated more is either a shorter book, or perhaps for this book to have covered all three of the original Twilight series, so that it didn’t feel like it dragged quite so much. Maybe it just felt like it dragged because I already knew the story and if I had been reading it fresh it wouldn’t have felt the same, but I also feel like the book doesn’t mean anything if you haven’t read Bella’s side of the story first.

All in all, it was great for reminiscing, but I probably won’t be compulsively re-reading it like I did for the first series as a teen.