31. Life and Death

By Stephenie Meyer (400 pp, ebook)

This is the last Stephenie Meyer I hadn't read. I watched the movies during October and went back and found this. It's Twilight with the genders swapped except for only a couple of characters. This did not work for me at all. The whole time I kept trying to translate which character was which rather than read the book as is. The things your average reader liked about the series are gendered. We like seeing Edward be so protective of Bella, throwing her on his back and climbing a tree, straining against the urge to kill her. It's not the same with Edythe and Beau. Edythe throwing Beau over her back and climbing a tree wasn't the same buzz. And it was weird but I didn't buy Edythe's infatuation the same way I did Edward's. But also: I kept picturing Edythe as Alice.