The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner

The Twilight Saga will forever be my guilty pleasure. I came across this book in a clearance bin not even sure what it was. I knew about the flipped story of Life and Death the spin off book about swapping the gender roles of the main characters and seeing the dynamic through a different perspective. But this novella is about Bree Tanner who played a very small part in Eclipse yet could have been a new edition to the Cullen coven.

Bree Tanner is a fifteen-year-old newborn vampire created to destroy the Cullen coven. The purpose of this novella was to experience this world through a newborn’s perspective. Bella had an easy experience when becoming a vampire in Breaking Dawn with the Cullen’s support and protection, but Bree had to fend for herself from the beginning. Although she was supposed to be a different personality from Bella, I had a difficult time relating to her. She was all about survival and fending for herself which isn’t like the vampire coven’s way of life. Vampires are similar to the werewolves being in packs. Vampires are not solitary creatures but rely on a partner to survive. Bree did find a partner, Diego, and their relationship did develop, but because the story was so short, there was too little time for the relationship to fully develop into anything.

The novella did start off a little slow, but towards the fight scene from the Eclipse novel, it picked up pace and interest. Bree couldn’t find Diego, her only friend, and Fred, her unofficial body guard, who took off for Canada before the fight leaving his involvement with the story ambiguous.

In Eclipse, the entire book is told through Bella’s perspective, so we never witness the fight between the werewolves and the Cullens versus the newborn army. But, through Bree’s perspective in this novel, we get an up-close view of the fight. We even get to see how she was captured by the Cullens and why Bella’s blood smelled so good to her and the newborns.

Overall it was a neat story to read for a missing scene from the parent book. It would have a been epic to see Bree become a part of the Cullens coven, but the Volturi made it clear they don’t give second chances for rule breakers even if they weren’t the ones who broke the rules.