Life and Death was released as a tenth anniversary special for Twilight, and is a gender flipped version of Twilight.
My thoughts
Unsurprisingly, a lot of the comments I have for Twilight, also apply to this version. I thought perhaps because Stephenie Meyer wrote in her foreword about the joy of doing an editing run of everything that bothered her in the first version, that it would also edit a few of the issues I found with it. Alas, our views vary greatly.
Descriptors: 'long eyes' was one of the worst offenders, closely followed by the mentions of Edythe looking like someone from an advertisement. Using the term OCD to attempt to describe Beau's habits was the worst offender. I don't know how that made it through an editing pre-read. Perhaps if it appeared in the 2005 version, I could forgive the narrow-mindedness of using a mental health disorder as a descriptor for 'organised'. However by 2015, I expected better. It came off so poorly and didn't add anything and made me angry.
The changed ending, which should have been some of the best stuff, was also quite poor. There was too much dialogue, trying to rush through explaining everything that we get drip fed over 4 books; each of the Cullens origin stories, Volturi history and Edythe's immense feelings of guilt. If someone is reading Life and Death, chances are they've already read the entire Twilight series, so it was just a pointless filler. Also Beau is not phased at all by his death that leaves his Mum and Dad mourning.
I liked Twilight but I liked this even less, as some of it was changed too little and still felt clunky. The idea of the changed ending was good, but not executed well. I would love to have read a Beau and Edward story, but I guess that's what fanfiction is for. To conclude, it's not worth a read. It comes off worse than the original Twilight book, which people already mostly agree is trash.
TL:DR
Just read Twilight instead, I'll give you the major difference: the ending is changed and Beau becomes a vampire when Joss (James) bites him.
YOU ARE READING
Spoilery Book Reviews
Non-FictionBook reviews written by me. All reviews will contain spoilers. Some books are ones I have read millions of times and are my well known favourites. Some books are really random and bizarre picks for me that were complete surprises.
