Book Review - Stephenie Meyer's The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner
The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner by Stephenie Meyer
Published by: Little Brown
Publication Date: June 5th, 2010
Format: Hardcover, 192 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy
Bree is a new vampire. Before Riley took her to "her" she didn't even know that Vampires existed. But now she's stuck with a bunch of other uncontrollable newbies and no one she can relate to. Till one night, while her hunting party starts a fracas, she decides on option B, Diego. She's never really talked to or interacted with him because he's a little older and been a vampire a little longer and appears to be Riley's boy, but all of a sudden there's a connection. They get each other. They spend the night hunting and then come dawn they take to his hidey hole, seeing as their newest "home" was destroyed once again. There they discover that not only can vampires have trust in each other but that their trust in Riley was badly misplaced. Something is happening, and not only that, the sun is not their enemy. They form a pact to get to the bottom of what's going on and get more than they bargained for. In the end, a final death is what awaits, but can they find the truth before then? Can they find out why they were created and who their creator is.
No one but Twilight fans will pick this book up, that's a given. It's a little back story on the only newbie vamp that Bella encounters in Eclipse after the final showdown of Cullens and Weres vs. Victoria and her "army." So the story is interesting in that we know the outcome, Bree and the others WILL die. We also know the mysteries that plague Bree, she was created by Victoria to exact revenge on Bella. So we know far more than the narrator and we're just waiting for the information to click into place for this hapless vampire. It's a waiting game, yet it's very intriguing. The way Victoria and Riley use vampire mythology to retain control over the newbies and almost treat them as hostile fugitives, keeping them locked in basements, gives a nice, darker spin to the sparkling vampire saga. Of course there's a love story, or course love would be able to conquer all and Bree and Diego could learn to be like the Cullens if they knew that option existed and their fate hadn't already been sealed. Because Bree has to be sympathetic while she's ripping out a whore's jugular.. she just didn't know any different. But in all, it was diverting, a quick read, and didn't have Bella being all clumsy and EMO, though it did have it's typical proliferation of typos and grammatical errors. But it also had a nice shout out to one of my favorite authors, Shannon Hale!
