My rating: ★★★★ 1/4 stars
OVERALL THOUGHTS: TWILIGHT COPY AND PASTA BUT I LIKE TWILIGHT SO *SHRUG*
Life and Death by Stephenie Meyer is a reimagined Twilight novel, with all of the characters (except for Charlie and Renee) being gender-swapped. Bella becomes Beaufort and Edward becomes Edythee, and so on... Basically, it's what if Bella would have been a dude? as a novel and not fanfiction.
Stephenie Meyer allegedly did this to prove to people who criticize Twilight, that Bella would have still been as much of a "damsel-in-distress" if she was male. I do think that Stephenie Meyer proved her point, as Beau was definitely very often in distress. Additionally, the book was definitely very interesting, although for the majority of the book, I wasn't able to get the characters' genders from the original Twilight book out of my head. Whenever Beau was talking about himself, all I could picture in my head was Bella. This wasn't just a beginning adjustment. I literally just could not stop thinking of the original characters.
My biggest criticism of this book would be that it was literally just a copy-paste of Twilight. I spent quite a bit flipping my book over and reading the parallel paragraph in Twilight. I would say that almost 90% of all of the text is identical, with just a she being turned into a he and vice versa. Beau didn't really have his own personality, he was also just a copy-paste Bella in all senses. I understand that that was precisely what Stephenie Meyer was attempting to do and prove. The thing is...it just made the book boring. Although I did really appreciate Edythe being female, it gave me absolutely no new content, except for the ending, which I will get to later. My rating is mostly a reflection of how much I like Twilight. If I was rating this book as its own novel, I would have docked a few points off the rating.
I would have appreciated for Beau and Edythe to have been given just a tiny bit more unique personalities. Maybe Beau could have had a knack for crosswords or tapdancing. Anything really to separate them from the original Bella and Edward. Further, it would have been great for the story to not have been the exact same Twilight story. What Stephenie could have done was take maybe the top five most important Twilight moments and gave the rest of the story its own unique flavor.
Warning! Spoilers ahead!
The one thing that I did really love and appreciate was the ending. Namely, that Beau was turned into a vampire after the run-in with the Tracker. I still don't fully and 100% understand why Edythe didn't just suck the venom away like Edward did for Bella, but it was something that made the story interesting. I especially appreciate this twist, as it makes Beau and Edythe get the same forever ending that Bella and Edward got at the end of Breaking Dawn. It completes their story and gives them a rounded-off ending.
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