My childhood returns in the form of Edward Cullen

Okay. I feel like I was sort of late to this news because I only found out last week, and it seemed like everyone was already freaking out about it. Apparently Stephanie Meyer is FINALLY releasing a full and legit version of Midnight Sun, which is Twilight but told from Edward’s point of view.

WHICH I WILL DEFINITELY SHAMELESSLY BE READING!!!

And probably the whole series all over again, too, before it releases in August. And probably The Host, because I loved that one. And maybe I’ll even get around to reading The Chemist by her, which always intrigued me but I just never got around to. I also just found out there was apparently going to be a sequel to The Host at one point? And personally I’m thinking thank the stars THAT didn’t happen. Don’t ruin a good thing.

I digress.

Cover theme still going strong, though not sure I love this one.

Why is this a big deal?

For those who never had the pleasure of stumbling upon it, or for those who never cared, allow me to fill you in on the scandal of Midnight Sun. Years ago in 2008 when the Twilight series was in progress and wildly popular, a really shitty thing happened to Stephanie Meyer as an author: someone leaked their sample copy of her work in progress and fans were downloading it to read.

Yes, you can probably guess, that book was an early draft of Midnight Sun. And I can tell you that it was wildly popular, because I alone read that incomplete work probably ten times. That I’ll admit to. It was so popular that there’s a Goodreads entry for “Midnight Sun – partial draft,” which currently has 9,467 reviews. For comparison, Graceling by Kristin Cashore was the 10th most popular book published in 2008 on Goodreads, and it has 21,772 ratings.

It was in fact so popular that Stephanie Meyer eventually just acknowledged what had happened and added the file to download on her own website. However, she said she was so distraught that she couldn’t imagine finishing the book. Which, of course, left everyone who wanted to see that sample finished distraught as well.

“So where does this leave Midnight Sun? My first feeling was that there was no way to continue. Writing isn’t like math; in math, two plus two always equals four no matter what your mood is like. With writing, the way you feel changes everything. If I tried to write Midnight Sun now, in my current frame of mind, James would probably win and all the Cullens would die, which wouldn’t dovetail too well with the original story. In any case, I feel too sad about what has happened to continue working on Midnight Sun, and so it is on hold indefinitely.”
Part of Meyer’s original statement

AND NOW, THE GRAND RETURN

I’m curious to see how much of it will be familiar, and how much of the final copy will be reflected in the leaked copy from years ago. I’m also curious if Meyer ditched the person who leaked the copy (as she was able to tell whose it was from the specific version of the writing), but I’ll probably never get that answer.