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Blockbuster author Stephenie Meyer makes a triumphant return to the world of Twilight with this companion: the iconic love story of Bella and Edward told from the vampire's point of view -- in paperback edition.When Edward Cullen and Bella Swan met in Twilight, an iconic love story was born. But until now, fans have heard only Bella's side of the story. At last, readers can experience Edward's version in the long-awaited companion novel, Midnight Sun.This unforgettable tale as told through Edward's eyes takes on a new and decidedly dark twist. Meeting Bella is both the most unnerving and intriguing event he has experienced in all his years as a vampire. As we learn more fascinating details about Edward's past and the complexity of his inner thoughts, we understand why this is the defining struggle of his life. How can he justify following his heart if it means leading Bella into danger?In Midnight Sun, Stephenie Meyer transports us back to a world that has captivated millions of readers and brings us an epic novel about the profound pleasures and devastating consequences of immortal love.An instant #1 New York Times BestsellerAn instant #1 USA Today BestsellerAn instant #1 Wall Street Journal BestsellerAn instant #1 IndieBound BestsellerApple Audiobook August Must-Listens Pick"People do not want to just read Meyer's books; they want to climb inside them and live there." -- Time"A literary phenomenon." -- New York Times
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ISBN-10
0316629456
ISBN-13
978-0316629454
Print length
832 pages
Language
English
Publisher
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publication date
January 31, 2022
Dimensions
5.5 x 2.65 x 8.2 inches
Item weight
1.5 pounds
It would always be so for me, too. I would always love this fragile human girl, for the rest of my limitless existence.
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Could a dead, frozen heart beat again? It felt as though mine was about to.
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A word I’d never said before in the presence of a lady slid between my clenched teeth.
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ASIN :
B087V733YJ
File size :
2717 KB
Text-to-speech :
Enabled
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Supported
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Enabled
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"For ardent fans of the star-crossed couple, [Midnight Sun] offers a more richly detailed view of Forks, Wash., and its inhabitants, undead and otherwise."―New York Times
"So, will team Edward be happy with this book?... Absolutely. Meyer wrote with her biggest fans in mind, dedicating the book to them, and plunging into the mind of Washington state's most complicated teenage vampire as he falls for a woman who is more determined than we've given her credit for."―The Washington Post
"[Midnight Sun] is more complex, more sophisticated and less innocent than Twilight. Although it was Bella's story that launched more than a decade's worth of young adult sci-fi and dystopian heroines, it turns out the narrative power -- and compelling internal drama -- was on Edward's side all along."―Time
"Stephenie Meyer's Midnight Sun brings about a long-awaited consummation. It's not a climactic moment between teenager Bella Swan and the gorgeous vampire Edward Cullen but a consummation that reconnects Ms. Meyer with her vast and hungry audience.... Will gratify devotees."―The Wall Street Journal
"The new book does, however, unexpectedly and rather wonderfully, suggest that the Bella-Edward relationship was never the central love affair of the Twilight series. Humans and vampires may gaze meaningfully into each other's eyes, but the true passion in the books is Meyer's love for her readers -- and their love for her."―NBC News
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1. FIRST SIGHT
THIS WAS THE TIME OF DAY WHEN I MOST WISHED I WERE ABLE to sleep.
High school.
Or was purgatory the right word? If there were any way to atone for my sins, this ought to count toward the tally in some measure. The tedium was not something I grew used to; every day seemed more impossibly monotonous than the last.
Perhaps this could even be considered my form of sleep—if sleep was defined as the inert state between active periods.
I stared at the cracks running through the plaster in the far corner of the cafeteria, imagining patterns into them that were not there. It was one way to tune out the voices that babbled like the gush of a river inside my head.
Several hundred of these voices I ignored out of boredom.
When it came to the human mind, I’d heard it all before and then some. Today, all thoughts were consumed with the trivial drama of a new addition to the small student body. It took so little to work them up. I’d seen the new face repeated in thought after thought from every angle. Just an ordinary human girl.
The excitement over her arrival was tiresomely predictable—it was the same reaction as one would get from flashing a shiny object at a group of toddlers. Half the sheep-like males were already imagining themselves infatuated with her, just because she was something new to look at. I tried harder to tune them out.
Only four voices did I block out of courtesy rather than distaste: my family, my two brothers and two sisters, who were so used to the lack of privacy in my presence that they rarely worried about it. I gave them what I could. I tried not to listen if I could help it.
Try as I may, still… I knew.
Rosalie was thinking, as usual, about herself—her mind was a stagnant pool with few surprises. She’d caught sight of her profile in the reflection off someone’s glasses, and she was mulling over her own perfection. No one else’s hair was closer to true gold, no one else’s shape was quite so perfectly an hourglass, no one else’s face was such a flawless, symmetrical oval. She didn’t compare herself to the humans here; that juxtaposition would have been laughable, absurd. She thought of others like us, none of them her equal.
Emmett’s usually carefree expression was crumpled with frustration. Even now, he ran one enormous hand through his ebony curls, twisting the hair into his fist. Still fuming over the wrestling match he’d lost to Jasper during the night. It would take all his limited patience to make it to the end of the school day to orchestrate a rematch. Hearing Emmett’s thoughts never felt intrusive, because he never thought one thing that he would not say aloud or put into action. Perhaps I only felt guilty reading the others’ minds because I knew there were things inside that they wouldn’t want me to know. If Rosalie’s mind was a stagnant pool, then Emmett’s was a lake with no shadows, glass clear.
And Jasper was… suffering. I suppressed a sigh.
Edward. Alice called my name in her head and had my attention at once.
It was just the same as having my name called aloud. I was glad my given name had fallen out of style in the last few decades—it had been annoying in the past; anytime anyone thought of any Edward, my head would turn automatically.
My head didn’t turn now. Alice and I were good at these private conversations. It was rare that anyone caught us. I kept my eyes on the lines in the plaster. How is he holding up? she asked me.
I frowned, just a small change in the set of my mouth. Nothing that would tip the others off. I could easily be frowning out of boredom.
Jasper had been still for too long. He wasn’t performing human tics the way we all must, constantly in motion so as not to stand out, like Emmett pulling at his hair, Rosalie crossing her legs first one way then the next, Alice tapping her toes against the linoleum, or me, moving my head to stare at different patterns in the wall. Jasper looked paralyzed, his lean form ramrod straight, even his honey hair seeming not to react to the air wafting from the vents.
Alice’s mental tone was alarmed now, and I saw in her mind that she was watching Jasper in her peripheral vision. Is there any danger? She searched ahead into the immediate future, skimming through visions of monotony for the source behind my frown. Even as she did so, she remembered to tuck one tiny fist under her sharp chin and blink regularly. She brushed a tuft of her short, jagged black hair out of her eyes.
I turned my head slowly to the left, as if looking at the bricks of the wall, sighed, and then turned to the right, back to the cracks in the ceiling. The others would assume I was playing human. Only Alice knew I was shaking my head.
She relaxed. Let me know if it gets too bad.
I moved only my eyes, up to the ceiling above, and back down.
Thanks for doing this.
I was glad I couldn’t answer her aloud. What would I say? My pleasure? It was hardly that. I didn’t enjoy tuning in to Jasper’s struggles. Was it really necessary to experiment this way? Wouldn’t the safer path be to just admit that he might never be able to handle his thirst as well as the rest of us could, and not push his limits? Why flirt with disaster?
It had been two weeks since our last hunting trip. That was not an immensely difficult time span for the rest of us. A little uncomfortable occasionally—if a human walked too close, if the wind blew the wrong way. But humans rarely walked too close. Their instincts told them what their conscious minds would never understand: We were a danger that must be avoided.
Jasper was very dangerous right now.
It did not happen often, but every now and then I would be struck by the obliviousness of the humans around us. We were all so accustomed to it, we always expected it, but occasionally it seemed more glaring than usual. None of them noticed us here, lounging at the battered cafeteria table, though an ambush of tigers sprawled in our places would be less lethal than we were. All they saw were five odd-looking people, close enough to human to pass. It was hard to imagine surviving with senses so incredibly dull.
At that moment, a small girl paused at the end of the closest table to ours, stopping to talk to a friend. She tossed her short, sandy hair, combing her fingers through it. The heaters blew her scent in our direction. I was used to the way that scent made me feel—the dry ache in my throat, the hollow yearn in my stomach, the automatic tightening of my muscles, the excess flow of venom in my mouth.
This was all quite normal, usually easy to ignore. It was harder just now, with the reactions stronger, doubled, as I monitored Jasper.
Jasper was letting his imagination get away from him. He was picturing it—picturing himself getting up from his seat next to Alice and going to stand beside the little girl. Thinking of leaning down and in, as if he were going to whisper in her ear, and letting his lips touch the arch of her throat. Imagining how the hot flow of her pulse beneath the weak barrier of her skin would feel under his mouth…
I kicked his chair.
He met my gaze, his black eyes resentful for a second, and then looked down. I could hear shame and rebellion war in his head.
“Sorry,” Jasper muttered.
I shrugged.
“You weren’t going to do anything,” Alice murmured to him, soothing his mortification. “I could see that.”
I fought back the frown that would give her lie away. We had to stick together, Alice and I. It wasn’t easy, being the freaks among those who were already freaks. We protected each other’s secrets.
“It helps a little if you think of them as people,” Alice suggested, her high, musical voice racing too fast for human ears to understand, if any had been close enough to hear. “Her name is Whitney. She has a baby sister she adores. Her mother invited Esme to that garden party, do you remember?”
“I know who she is,” Jasper said curtly. He turned away to stare out one of the small windows that were spaced just under the eaves around the long room. His tone ended the conversation.
He would have to hunt tonight. It was ridiculous to take risks like this, trying to test his strength, to build his endurance. Jasper should just accept his limitations and work within them.
Alice sighed silently and stood, taking her tray of food—her prop, as it were—with her and leaving him alone. She knew when he’d had enough of her encouragement. Though Rosalie and Emmett were more flagrant about their relationship, it was Alice and Jasper who knew each other’s every need as well as their own. As if they could read minds, too—but only each other’s.
Edward.
Reflex reaction. I turned to the sound of my name being called, though it wasn’t being called, just thought.
My eyes locked for half a second with a pair of large, chocolate-brown human eyes set in a pale, heart-shaped face. I knew the face, though I’d never seen it myself before this moment. It had been foremost in every human head today. The new student, Isabella Swan. Daughter of the town’s chief of police, brought to live here by some new custody situation. Bella. She’d corrected everyone who’d used her full name.
I looked away, bored. It took me a second to realize that she had not been the one to think my name.
Of course she’s already crushing on the Cullens, I heard the first thought continue.
Now I recognized the “voice.”
Jessica Stanley—it had been a while since she’d bothered me with her internal chatter. What a relief it had been when she’d gotten over her misplaced fixation. It used to be nearly impossible to escape her constant, ridiculous daydreams. I’d wished, at the time, that I could explain to her exactly what would have happened if my lips, and the teeth behind them, had gotten anywhere near her. That would have silenced those annoying fantasies. The thought of her reaction almost made me smile.
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Stephenie Meyer
Stephenie Meyer's life changed dramatically on June 2, 2003. The stay-at-home mother of three young sons woke-up from a dream featuring seemingly real characters that she could not get out of her head. "Though I had a million things to do (i.e. making breakfast for hungry children, dressing and changing the diapers of said children, finding the swimsuits that no one ever puts away in the right place), I stayed in bed, thinking about the dream. Unwillingly, I eventually got up and did the immediate necessities, and then put everything that I possibly could on the back burner and sat down at the computer to write--something I hadn't done in so long that I wondered why I was bothering." Meyer invented the plot during the day through swim lessons and potty training, then writing it out late at night when the house was quiet. Three months later she finished her first novel, Twilight.
Twilight was one of 2005's most talked about novels and within weeks of its release the book debuted at #5 on The New York Times bestseller list.Among its many accolades, Twilight was named an "ALA Top Ten Books for Young Adults," an Amazon.com "Best Book of the Decade&So Far", and a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year. The movie version of Twilight will be released by Summit Entertainment nationwide on November 21, 2008, starring Kristen Stewart ("Into The Wild") and Robert Pattinson ("Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire").
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Customer reviews
4.7 out of 5
1,241 global ratings
Disappointed
5
Great book
Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2024
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I really enjoyed this book. It brought a lot more detail and background into the story.
cravenb
5
This book is rattie approved
Reviewed in the United States on April 23, 2024
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I love it
Annette
5
Have waited for this for years
Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2024
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Holy moly 820 pages. It’s a huge book and came in perfect condition. I can’t wait to read
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