It’s funny how time and age makes you look at things differently. I know both Kate and I have mentioned this before on this blog. When the Twilight first came out 15 years ago we were fans. I personally was borderline obsessed with the series. I reread them multiple times back to back to back. Once I finished with Eclipse, I would go immediately go back to Twilight and reread them all over again. I even scheduled my move to New York around the Breaking Dawn Midnight release party. I don’t remember the last time I read Twilight but I’m thinking it was probably some time around 2008. Obviously, a lot of happened in the 12 years since the last time I read Twilight. The movies came out and that lead to more discourse to be written about them. The inevitable backlash and burnout happened. My own opinion changed. I’ll admit there was a short period that I felt embarrassed for liking them though over time I had began to soften on them and even start to defend them. Our one and only podcast we discussed vampire novels and Twilight featured heavily. I started to feel that some of the backlash was unwarranted. That it mostly focused on the fact that it was written by a woman and had a fan base made up of young girls and their mothers. Two demographics that are rarely taken seriously. When Stephenie Meyer announced that she was going to finally release Midnight Sun I was ecstatic. Kate and I planned to reread the series to prepare. It was going to be amazing! I did not anticipate how hard it was going to be me to get through just Twilight. Not all of it had to do with the text. The pandemic really has interrupted so much of our lives but yes the story was hard to get into. I’ve already talked about my feelings Bella. My feelings about Edward are not any better and honestly Midnight Sun does improve it but more on that in another post. How did I think this book was romantic? I was more Team Jacob than Team Edward because I always felt that Edward was a little to controlling even back then but this time around I was more horrified by his actions. The manipulation and gas lighting that Edward pulls on Bella throughout the series is not okay. I realize to keep him and family safe there is a certain amount of lying is a must but the things he continue to keep from her. The fact he breaks into her house to watch her sleep. How he appoints himself her guardian without her knowledge or consent. How he justifies all of this as for her own good to try to convince himself that he is still a good guy despite also being aware that he is the greatest threat to her safety then anything else in forks. Bella is also not so great. Meyer’s tries to make her selflessness as a virtue but I think it’s kind of her weakness. She has no self preservation or just no self. She sees no issues with Edward entering her house without her consent. She’s flattered. She refuses to tell Charley that she is going on a date with Edward because she wants to protect him and his family if something goes bad like killing her. She runs off the meet James alone to save her mom but more importantly save Edward. The moment she starts to get involved with Edward she drops everything else. To be clear, she didn’t really much care for many of her other friends before so her dropping them wasn’t a hardship but it really does show her priorities. Being in my late thirties now, how quickly Bella is to give up her youth for immortality the most troubling. The one thing I agree with Edward. She is so focused on the fact that she will age and Edward won’t and the aesthetics of how that will look as time goes by. That she never considers of what she’ll give up or that her own priorities might change. She might go to college, meet other people and find a subject that she is passionate about and decide that she wants more then just Edward. She denies herself the opportunity to grow. Not to mention the abuse she suffers. Make no mistake, Edward is an abuser. He may not be physically hurting her but he is emotionally. He manipulates her to feel to certain ways. He constricts her movements of where she can go and who she can see. He constantly puts her in danger and not just by being in her presence but from other vampires as well. Edward is not the romantic lead he or Bella thinks he is. I’ll go more into it with Midnight Sun but I have a feeling that Twilight Series written as it is now would not be published or at least would not be the world wide sensation it became. Not in the Me Too era. If anything Twilight is cautionary tale and maybe that’s how she view it from now on.