Review: #733
Title: Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined
Series: Twilight - companion book
Author: Stephenie Meyer
Read Before: no
Comments: At first glance, Life and Death is a lazy redux of Twilight but with all characters gender-swapped. It still feels like that for most of the novel, however, the author has put in a little bit more effort and improved some of the wording, the structure and other tidbits to make it suit more for a male lead. At its core, it is still the same story and all the events are still the same. Unfortunately, the gender-swapped characters don’t work well all of the time. Despite the author being adamant that the story would work no matter the gender, Beau (the male version of Bella) just comes off as pathetic and weak. He doesn’t manage to sell the clumsiness of the character, or the pale delicate nature that requires Edythe (female version of Edward) to protect and save him. It actually gets really confusing at times thanks to the author’s tendency to use abnormal/uncommon names for ALL the characters such as McKayla (Mike), Jessamine (Jasper) and Jules (Jacob). If you manage to overcome your initial resistance, it does become better and the ending was adapted well all in all and provided a neat refreshing twist to the formula. Life and Death is worthwhile if you haven’t read Twilight in a while or you are a huge fan, since it doesn’t add much new and can feel superficial during many of its sections.
Rating: 6.5/10