The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner – a Twilight Novella by Stephenie Meyer | Book Review

This small book makes a part of Twilight saga indirectly. The Twilight saga is entirely Bella’s story, told by her most of the time, giving us a first hand account of her feelings and her experiences. This novella here is a story of Bree, a girl whose fate is as different from Bella’s as could be.

Driven away from her home at the age of 15 by a tyrant father, jobless and starving, she runs into a vampire called Riley, who takes her to Victoria. And the vampire Bree is created as a part of the newborn army. With all new strength and powers, her existence is far from peace and perfection. Living with unstable and highly dangerous newborn vampires who can’t use their brains and reason meant living in a continual threat of extinction. Bree survives all these by keeping away from everyone as much as possible.

In one nightly exertion for hunting, she is accompanied by a vampire called Diego, who is past the initial dangerous phase and they become friends. Discussing their lives and fate, they do realise that Riley is hiding things from them. Following Riley in the night, they find out the secrets about their creator Victoria, the Volturis and their intention of leading them into a fight against other vampires. Diego trusts Riley and goes to him to discuss matters keeping Bree out of the scene, but never returns. Meanwhile, Riley comes back and lies to Bree about Diego, saying he has gone ahead with Victoria.

The army is led to fight the Cullens. Bree has a chance to flee from the army, save her own life and go her own way in the vast world. But, she decides to go and meet Diego first so that they can both leave the army together. Its too late before she realises that she is trapped. And clinging on the last chance of survival, she surrenders to the Cullens instead of fighting. If you have read the twilight series, you already know her fate, but sometimes the journey is much more interesting than the end. So, is the case here.

An interesting read to add to your Twilight experience by letting you see another side of the picture. The story has the power to make you wonder whether things could have ended up differently than they did and almost making you wish that at least for Bree it would have turned out differently. Enjoy reading……