I read a Stephenie Meyer book.
Only the novella, The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, because I could never make it through a whole novel. Especially since I would have to start with Twilight, her first book, which I hear has terrible writing, and the plot....I can't read that. No way. It would be torture. And then I'd probably feel obligated to read the rest of the series. More torture. I have better uses for my time.I. So why did I read the Bree Tanner book?
1. It was offered for a limited time as free to read online.
Since it's on my list of books I will not buy or be seen carrying out of a library it was now or never if I was going to read it.
2. Curiosity killed the cat, but I must not be on my last life yet.
I suppose I wanted to know what people saw in her writing to make her a bestseller. Going into this I had heard from different people: that her writing craft in Twilight was terrible, that her writing sucks you in.
3. It's a lot shorter than her novels.
I went into this fully expecting to not like much of the experience. Here was a way to get a feel for her writing without wanting to kill myself before the end. 178 pages sounded much more palatable than 544+.
4. I can finally claim to have my own opinion of Stephenie Meyer.
II. Disclaimer
I think it's important to emphasize that this book is a side story to the events in Eclipse. I have not read Eclipse. I therefore do not understand the context of Bree Tanner's life. That also means that I fall outside of this book's target audience, because it assumes that the reader is familiar with Meyer's vampire novels. Furthermore, this is the first book I've ever read about vampires. I have also not read very widely in the genre of romance books.
In other words, I don't know what I'm talking about. This book is so far outside of everything I like to read I don't have much to compare it to. I guess you should know that everything I'm going to say is largely uninformed and extremely biased. Uniformed because of my decision to read a book meant for an audience familiar with its context in relation to the other Twilight books, biased because I have absolutely no intention of reading those other books for a lot of biased reasons.
All that to say: don't take me too seriously.
III. A brief synopsis with spoilers:
Bree Tanner is a "newborn" vampire (she's only been a vampire for 3 months). She's struggling to survive in a pack of vampires who like to rip each other apart and set each other on fire. While on a hunt she meets Diego, who is not like the other vampires. He's nice to her and actually has a brain. Romantic blah blah blah. Together they discover that their leader Riley has been lying to them about a lot of things (like not being able to go out in the sunlight) and that there are other vampires in the world who want to kill their pack. Riley sends his army of vampires out to kill the smaller, older group of vampires and their pet human (Bella). Really he's just sending them to their deaths because they cannot possibly win against the more experienced vampires, who also apparently have brains. Meanwhile, Bree and Diego are separated and Riley tells her Diego has already gone ahead to the fight. This is another lie and when Bree cannot find Diego she jumps to the conclusion that Riley killed him. Not wanting to fight she surrenders to the older vampires while the rest of the pack is slaughtered. They try to get her to control her thirst for Bella's blood. Then some sort of vampire police come because the creation of newborn vampires is forbidden and they want Bree to be killed.
Since I can already tell this review is going to be long I'm breaking it up into parts. Stay tuned for what I thought of the book.
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