Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined, by Stephenie Meyer, is a fantasy novel that is the “reimagined” version of Twilight; but there’s a catch: the genders, the names, and the roles of the two main characters are reversed, with only a few exceptions. The story follows essentially the same plot-line as Twilight, but with the necessary adjustments and slight changes to the story, dialogue, backgrounds, and personalities of the characters to accommodate the switched gender roles. Also, unlike the Twilight series, Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined is a stand-alone novel that also features an alternate ending from the original plot-line.

Even though the whole school had warned Beau, the new student in the school, not to get involved with Edythe, he cannot help himself but be drawn to her. She is mysterious, gorgeous, and just everything about her is just completely fascinating. However, whenever Beau tries to befriend her, Edythe is acting as if Beau is a poison and tries everything in her power to detach herself from him. Of course, Beau does not give up until finally, Edythe gives up avoiding him. They become friends and later on, strong feelings towards one another begins to surface. Even when Beau finds out that the whole family of Edythe are vampires, including Edythe, Beau never regrets loving Edythe and continues to lover her. Unfortunately, the only problem is that another group of vampires from another region are visiting Edythe’s family and they have a strong liking of drinking humans’ blood. So, when they find Beau with Edythe’s family, one of them becomes obsessed with the idea of drinking Beau’s blood. Because of that, Edythe and her family begins to protect Beau and his family. Sadly, the vampire who’s desire for Beau’s blood is growing rapidly threatens Beau using his mother as a bait and when Beau comes to the vampire, the vampire bites Beau’s exposed neck. Edythe and her family barges in too late, and the only way to save Beau is to make him into a vampire. Beau accepts his fate and he becomes a vampire, like his beloved Edythe and her family.

In the end, the fact that risk taking can lead to discovering new things is shown through Beau and Edythe. Beau is a human boy and Edythe is a vampire girl. They were not destined to be together but when they took the risk of loving each other, they found true love waiting for them at their doorstep. Many people in the world are scared of taking new risks and just assume that the result is going to be negative. However, there are many cases that proves that when a person takes certain risks, they discover amazing new things that they have never known before in the past. A very obvious example of this is when a person refuses to go to his church retreat. Even though his parents try their best to coax their son into going, the person does not want to go since he just assume that it is going to be a disaster. Of course, the parents win and the person has to go no matter what his opinions of the retreat might be. However, when he actually take the risk and goes there, even though it was not in his own free willpower, he would still gain a lot of positive things. So when he returns from the retreat, he would have acquired many experiences and friends and a lot more that he would not have gained if he was not there.

However, despite the deep message in the book and the interesting plots, I did not like this book. Many people around me have said that Twilight is just plainly amazing and that I should try them. Unfortunately, I did not have the time to try them since there were a lot of other books that were on my to-read list. So, when I went to a library in Manhattan and saw this book, I assumed it would be great since this book basically followed the same plot line as the Twilight series which had gotten high praise. Sadly, the book was a huge disappointment to me. One of the main reasons was because since Twilight got so much praise, I just blindly assumed that this book, which is pretty much has the same plot line, would received equal amount of praise too. Therefore, having a more higher expectations for this specific book than some of the other books I have read in the past, raised my disappointment far more higher than some of the other books I though was not that great.

Moreover, the book just never captured my eyes like other books usually did. I was immensely disappointed in the plot line, where there seemed to exist only romance between the two main characters in the book, and not some action. The action only emerges once in between the falling action and the resolution, so neither tension nor suspense have ever built up in any parts of the book beforehand. Usually, I love books that are mysterious and contain a lot of unexpected twists and turns in their plots. However, Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined was just a plain story with no sudden twists and turns in it. Therefore, if I were the author, I would have made sure to put more mystery and tension during the rising action and climax of the book, and not just in the ending. Furthermore, I thought that the relationship that Beau and Edythe had shared was just to straightforward and easy. In my opinion, the readers would have been more drawn into the book if the author had inserted more intense and complex relationship between the two main characters. This not only creates both tension and suspense, but it also makes the mind of a reader question continuously on whether Beau and Edythe’s relationship would remain intact or completely shatter. More difficult relationships between characters can lead to more complicated plots.

Last but not least, I did not enjoy this book as much as I usually did when I read books because it did not show any creativity on the author’s part. It seems to me that the author of this book, Stephenie Meyer, has not put that much effort into writing this book. There are many evidences that show that some parts in the Twilight and Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined are exactly the same, with some exceptions of words. One example of this is at the end of chapter one, when Bella/Beau is heading home thinking that Edward/Edythe hates her/him. Beau states in Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined: “I headed back to Charlie’s house, trying to think of nothing at all,” and Bella states in Twilight: “I headed back to Charlie’s house, fighting tears the whole way there”. So, with both of the two book having a nearly same word-for-word plots with just changes in the pronouns and names of the people, it seems like all the author did was find all the pronouns and names in Twilight and just substituted another word for them. This is mainly the reason on why many people,including myself, were disappointed and disliked the book Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined.