Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined

Synopsis

There are two sides to every story….You know Bella and Edward, now get to know Beau and Edythe.

When Beaufort Swan moves to the gloomy town of Forks and meets the mysterious, alluring Edythe Cullen, his life takes a thrilling and terrifying turn. With her porcelain skin, golden eyes, mesmerizing voice, and supernatural gifts, Edythe is both irresistible and enigmatic.

What Beau doesn’t realize is the closer he gets to her, the more he is putting himself and those around him at risk. And, it might be too late to turn back….(goodreads.com)

Should Lit Girls read it?

If you have read and/or are a fan of the Twilight series then absolutely yes! If you’ve never read Twilight, I would start with them, but Life and Death was a fresh take on a familiar narrative.

Lit Girls Take

(Warning Spoilers Ahead)

I didn’t anticipate that the first book I reviewed for this blog would be Twilight related but, here we are. Life and Death is literally (almost word for word) Twilight with the genders of all the characters swapped. The only ones who escaped this flip were Charlie and Renee for reasons Stephanie explains in the forward. Normally I would give a spoiler heavy synopsis here, but with this I simply don’t see the point: Boy meets girl, girl is a (vegetarian) vampire, they fall in love, chaos ensues. Sound familiar?

However, I actually really liked this story. I liked it way more than Twilight. Beau has the same clumsiness and self depreciation that Bella has, but in a more natural way. In fact, the insistence that he is boring and his confusion over all the female attention upon his arrival in Forks was adorable. It endeared me to him in a way that it didn’t with Bella. Perhaps Bella played too much into the damsel trope, the helpless clumsy girl who’s saved by the hot guy narrative. Flipping the genders was refreshing, since it places a female in the position of power. There was something more plausible in the Edythe/Beau relationship. Something that seemed more real than their Twilight counterparts.

Perhaps my memory of the movies has tainted my impression of Bella, since her on screen persona was much less likable. I read twilight (the series) just once before the films came out, and then not again since. So with Beau and Edythe they were able to exist only in my imagination, whole and untainted by Hollywood.

I did spend time early on getting distracted by the word-for-word comparison with Twilight. Since I was reading the dual edition kindle version I was able to flip between the stories easily to compare. Once I got past that and sorted out all the Cullen’s and their weird names, I was able to just enjoy Beau and Edythe. While something about Bella and Edwards relationship always seemed predatory and possessive, the gender flip removed some of that. Beau spends a lot of time trying to convince himself that he’s imagining things and his constant bewilderment at being with Edythe did not bother me the way it did in Twilight. Beau just seemed like a more  together person than Bella and I liked him for that. (again this could be a movie bias coming into play)

I also spent a lot of time speculating on how the story would play across the later books. The rules of vampires created by Stephanie Meyer wouldn’t allow for pretty much any of Breaking Dawn to play out. There seemed to be a glaring problem that was , unfortunately, gender specific. Bella could get pregnant; while Beau, or Edythe for that matter, cannot. No Renesmee, no Volturi confrontation. How would it all play out?

In my opinion Stephanie handled this masterfully. She gave Beau and Edythe their own happy ending. She changed the outcome of the incident at the ballet studio and had Edythe change Beau. There was an important distinction in this scene too. Edythe, ultimately, lets Beau make his own choice about being turned. Throughout the Twilight novels Edward refuses Bella’s requests to change her. He often tells Bella (if my recollection is correct) what’s best for her instead of letting her make that choice for herself.

Now, the argument there is that Edward hates what he is so much that he would never do that to Bella if there was another choice, but he never acknowledges that it’s her choice. Edythe seemed to me to be more sure of herself than Edward. She still believed she was a monster but she took comfort and reassured by Beaus’ reactions to her in a way that gave her a confidence I didn’t see in Edward. 

There was also not such explicit talk of Beau wanting to be changed, or time to explore that’s an option like with Twilight, but that somehow made it more meaningful. When Edythe ends up faced with the choice between ending Beaus life or changing him she asks flat out what he wants.  The way the change plays out and Beaus ability to control his newborn instincts are very similar to Bellas. Much of the information Bella gets over the course of four books gets condensed to a few snippets during the change and into the epilogue. I was pleased also to see that she didn’t count out the werewolf pack either, though we’ll have to use our imaginations as to how their story plays out. 

Ultimately, as much as I liked Beau, the placement of females into the leading roles of power was awesome! Bonnie and Corine as leaders of their respective “packs” was refreshing and energizing. They were strong and effective leaders. Corine as the talented doctor vampire with a conscience was perfect. In addition, Edythe’s strength, control, and sacrifice made this a feminist story, although it was from the POV of a male protagonist. As an aside here; Edythe was changed in 1918 while dying of the Spanish Flu, so the lesson  for us in 2020 is wear a mask and stay home or you might end up a vampire. I’m just saying

In the end, I liked this standalone story more than I thought I would, and more than Twilight. If you’ve never read twilight (sorry to ruin everything for you) I would still recommend you start there. But for fans of the series this experiment was fun, intriguing and, I would say, successful.