Midnight Sun, for those who don’t know, is the first Twilight book told from Edward’s perspective. The first time I tried to read it was in 2020 when it came out. I did not get very far, and wrote the following review:

Did not finish. Had to quit when Bella said “I’m so clumsy I’m almost disabled.” 
I don’t know what he sees in her, she’s actually a horrible person.

– 1-star Goodreads Review, August 7th, 2020

But recently I had a craving for some melodrama and angst, and the first thing that came to mind was Edward Cullen. I decided to try Midnight Sun again. This time I was more prepared for what I was getting into. If I had tried to read a physical copy again, I don’t think I would’ve been able to get through it, even if it did have more angst than any other book I’ve ever read. However, I’ve recently gotten into audiobooks, and I discovered that it’s easier to get through tough books when I use audiobooks, because every time I reach a spot where I’d have stopped, the narrator just keeps going.

So I borrowed the audiobook for free from the Libby app using my library card (highly recommend a library card) and I got through Midnight Sun with the help of one Jake Abel. Four years after my initial attempt, I would like to change my rating from 1 to 1.5 and here are a few reasons why:

  • While my opinion of her still isn’t very high, I no longer think Bella is a horrible person. More so, she seems quite foolish. Sure, she’s book-smart, but wise she is not. However, the biggest revelation about her—which I did not expect—was that there were clear signs of her having childhood trauma. That was interesting. In addition to Edward identifying Bella’s mother as a narcissist who is child-like, needy, and usually gets her way, Bella:
    • does a poor job of recognizing people and situations that are unsafe
    • is dangerously clumsy, suggesting she didn’t develop proper hand-eye coordination as a child
    • has little sense of self-preservation and doesn’t seem to value her life much
    • has low self-esteem and deprecates herself constantly
    • is selfless to the point of neglecting her own wants and needs in service of others
    • blames problems on herself even with evidence to the contrary
    • canonically took on the parent role with her mother and “grew up too fast”
    • is unused to getting any amount of attention or being taken care of/wanted
    • is afraid of rejection, to the point of having depression and anxiety at the idea of it
    • has abandonment issues, often expecting to be abandoned by loved ones
    • doesn’t really eat unless someone makes her
    • has sleeping problems when we first meet her
    • doesn’t have much of a plan for her own future
    • is afraid to anger or disappoint others, even when it would be in their best interest
    • dismisses/dampens her own emotions, negative or positive, resulting in her reactions not quite matching up with the situation
    • has social anxiety and doesn’t take part in conversation with peers easily
    • doesn’t bat an eye when she finds out someone she wasn’t even talking to at the time had been secretly watching her sleep every night and even followed her to another city
    • rarely cares when boundaries are overstepped
    • does things she doesn’t want to do to make others happy
    • is well-practiced at countering attempts of gaslighting
    • becomes codependent as soon as she starts dating
    • doesn’t seem to have a sense of self outside of who she is to other people
  • Edward is sooo creepy, even more so than I realized from the original book and well beyond what I can excuse for a melodramatic teenager/old man. He should not be allowed to participate in society. Considering he can read minds, his thoughts tend to be very self-centred. He has controlling tendencies and puts way too much responsibility for his own well-being on Bella’s shoulders. He’s a stalker and despite constantly insisting his murderous days are over, seriously considers murdering all sorts of people throughout the book. A lot of the things I listed as evidence of Bella’s abuse are things he likes about her. The interesting thing is that he’s aware of most of this, and even Meyer seems to understand this because she inserts a certain story about the innocent man from Edward’s past which reflects Edward so well and even suggests that the best thing is for Edward to die. Yet, his actions never lead to anything more than some self-hatred and he faces no consequences.
  • Combining Edward’s unhinged creepiness with the revelation of Bella’s childhood trauma, it makes more sense now why she wouldn’t see them as red flags and why their relationship would develop so fast and furious. However, their POVs drench this relationship with perceived romance, making for a fascinating study of how abusive relationships develop, but also a terrible choice for young girls who can’t recognize the red flags Edward has sprouting out of his head. It could be argued that they grow out of it in later books, but I’m only reviewing this one.
  • The prose was 80% good enough—a little too repetitive and purple for my taste—but there were certain words and phrases written so poorly that I kind of want to get my hands on a hard copy so I can go in with scissors and cut them out. Some of these were incredibly cringey or awful in the same ways as the sentence I quoted four years ago during my first attempt. However, some of these were absolutely hilarious and vastly improved otherwise inane scenes of the book. At one point, Bella has “gyrations” in her sleep. At another, Edward’s arm “convulses” around Bella’s shoulders. The images these put in my head were so funny, I burst out laughing in public several times.

So is Midnight Sun a good book or a bad one? That’s easy: it’s bad. But as far as bad books go, it’s good, which is how this series got so popular in the first place. But also, there are unforgivable sins which make me want to delete this whole review because the idea of bringing attention to this book raises ethical dilemmas for me. (I was only going to write a couple of lines on Goodreads, but it turned into this kind of by accident.) In conclusion, on the scale of good and bad books, this falls into the rare Bad Good Bad Book category. I cannot in good conscience recommend Midnight Sun to anyone.

If you enjoyed this, give it a like and a share and maybe I’ll do more book analyses in the future. Maybe.

Effects of Emotional Abuse: https://psychcentral.com/health/effects-of-emotional-abuse

Signs of Codependency: https://psychcentral.com/lib/symptoms-signs-of-codependency