Previously: Edward runs away and then runs back to sniff Bella and wonder why she’s so spicy.
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Catherine: One of our lovely commenters reminded me on the first recap of this book that the leak of the first few chapters of Midnight Sun was actually 12 CHAPTERS long. I incorrectly remembered it being 2-3, tops. This revelation lead me to do some research, which lead me to this blog post from Meyer’s blog from the Year of Our Lord 2008 where she talks about the leak and how she was so upset that if she had tried to keep writing in that emotional state, she would have killed off all of the Cullens and let James win. So Adele was right, we really could’ve had it all.
On that note, onto the recap!
Chapter 3 begins with Edward and Carlisle hunting. Edward remembers how he broke the news that he was leaving to Carlisle. Basically, it’s just a flashback of Edward telling his dad he wants to nom Bella, and Carlisle giving him his car keys and wishing him well. In the present, Carlisle worries that he did the wrong thing in letting Edward leave, and Edward assures him that it was the right thing. Carlisle asks why Edward came back and why he wants to stay in Forks rather then just having the whole family pack up and skip town. Edward can’t explain it because he’s ~~falling in luuuvvvv~~ with Bella, but doesn’t realize it yet because he barely knows anything about her besides the fact that she falls down a lot.
Carlisle says that he doesn’t get it, but stops nagging Edward in order to give him privacy and the two feast on a group of deer offpage (K: Thank God) even though Edward thinks the smell of the deer is “less than mouth-watering” in comparison to Bella’s stank. Nice. Just kill some poor deer even though you’re probably gonna leave half of it on your plate ’cause you’re more bored than hungry.
Kirsti: The worst thing about this is that he says “I felt almost… swollen from the amount of blood I’d consumed” and the combination of ellipses and italics on the word ‘swollen’ led to unpleasant ideas about what, precisely, was swollen.
Marines: Meanwhile, all I can think about are mosquitoes? Just confirming that yes, in fact, we are all having unpleasant experiences and visuals.
Catherine: Edward sits on a rock and watches the sunrise and thinks some more about how he should probably just leave Forks.
“They could spread some story to explain my absence. Boarding school in Europe. Visiting distant relatives. Teenage runaway. The story didn’t matter. No one would question too intensely.”
Yes, no one ever looks for missing white children.
Wouldn’t it be a better idea to, oh, I don’t know, not start out as a high school student when they moved to a town so that way if one of them wanted to leave unexpectedly like this they wouldn’t have to make up some BS story to avoid suspicion? Also, then they WOULDN’T HAVE TO GO TO HIGH SCHOOL EVERYDAY.
K: As someone who gets paid to go to high school every day, I cannot understand why anyone would voluntarily be a high school student a second time oh my God run for your lives.
Mari: In the grand scheme of things, what does pretending to go to high school add? Starting that young makes it more suspicious that they don’t age, if you ask me. But I guess if you wanted to start at 16, home school is a fine explanation? No? No? Fine. Whatever. We can move on for now, but I can’t promise we will not complain about vampires in high school again.
Catherine: I will be complaining about it constantly.
Edward thinks that if he left for a few years, Bella would probably go off to college or marry someone or something. Not sure what her marrying someone would do to keep him from killing her.
Annie: Because then she would be the property of whomever she married, and we all know that while predators like Edward do not respect a woman or her own agency, they do respect the property of another man.
Catherine: Gross.
The idea of Bella marrying someone else gives Edward indigestion of the heart. He wonders if it’s because he’s envious of her getting to grow up and have a life when he never can. It’s taking him a long while to work out that he’s into finding out more about her then just whether or not she’s kosher but, in fairness, in 100 years of his life he’s never asked his dick any questions before and he’s damn sure not gonna start now. The upshot is that, as the sun rises, Edward decides that Carlisle is right and he will leave Forks. He’s planning to stay one more day to see Bella one last time and then leave forever. And, as we know, that definitely happens and the rest of this book is just blank pages for you to doodle your thoughts and dreams upon.
K: A much better use of all those dead trees tbh.
Catherine: Back in the Cullen Murder Mansion, Alice has, predictably already predicted that he is leaving. She think-asks whether she and “Jazz” should come with him. I think we mentioned in our Breaking Dawn recaps that Jasper being referred to as ‘Jazz’ starts very suddenly in that book for no apparent reason, and I’m glad to see that it carried over to this one with all of the absurdity intact. Alice shows him some trippy, indistinct visions of him in a meadow with someone and tells him that his future is shifting around so much that it’s hard to keep track of what is going to happen next. You had one job, Alice. (K: Look, sometimes Google fails you no matter how hard you refine your search terms, okay?) He asks her if he’s gonna viciously slaughter Bella today and she’s like mmmm, don’t think so! So they decide to go to school. (“M: Probably definitely maybe not today!” Sounds safe, let’s go!)
The whole gang drives to school, and Edward thinks about how gross Emmett and Rosalie are for gazing into each other’s eyes, which, fair. But he also wonders if he just feels that way because he’s an incel.
“Some days it was harder than others to live with three sets of perfectly matched lovers. This was one of them.”
Yeesh. Really sounds like a cult, doesn’t it?
K: Yeah, the fact that he’s never been like “What the fuck, why do you all still live together when you all just want to bone all the time??” really amps up the cult quality.
Annie: I love that they’re living as siblings AND lovers. That’s really neat!
Mari: I’m just amazed at Edward Cullen: Incel because yes.
Catherine: Edward gets to school and Bella isn’t there yet, so he decides to wait for her in the parking lot even though it seems like he doesn’t actually intend to talk to her. He’s just gonna wait so that he can… stare… at… her?
Mari: In plain view, too! Not like subtlety. Just standing there, waiting to watch Bella with his murder-hungry gaze.
Catherine: I think you all know what scene this is. Bella drives into the parking lot slowly and carefully because it’s icy out. Edward can’t figure out, at first, why she and every other human is driving so slowly and then he realizes that it’s icy and he’s like, oh yeah, humans can get in car accidents. Again, we talked in our other recaps about how ridiculous it is that the Twilight vamps think their powers give them the right to drive like assholes even though they might kill someone else on the road. Not sure how super speed would prevent you from slamming into someone else’s car. But whatever.
Mari: Stephenie Meyer is trying to sell us on the Cullen-Hales as the good vamps because they don’t take human life while also showing us in great detail that they have absolutely no regard for human life.
Annie: Edward cannot even have kind, pleasant or even neutral thoughts about humans. They give zero fucks about humans.
Catherine: Edward watches as Bella gets out of Wow. Free. Truck and smiles at her tires like she’s touched. Readers of Twilight will remember that this was due to the fact that Charlie had put snow chains on her tires and she was touched that he thought of it. But Edward is confused, and not being able to mentally violate her mind, he has no way of picking apart the enigma that is Taco Bella.
Just as he’s thinking about this, Alice suddenly shouts “No!” and he sees in Alice’s mind that Bella is gonna get smacked by Tyler’s truck.
Mari: I found it weird that we get so much emphasis on Alice having a vision at this moment, but after a bunch of explanation, it kind of reads that Meyer is answering her own plot hole here. Alice has visions, but can’t have visions about Bella, right? Bella is a black hole and no powers go there. So why did she have this vision? Edward explains (“explains”) that it probably has something to do with him, but also they have like one second to have and process the vision in great detail, and finally Edward assures us that even if Alice didn’t have this plot hole vision, he would’ve totally been able to judge the trajectory of the van all by himself. Amazing. That explanation was 100% definitely not worth the wait, thanks Stephenie!
Annie: Why bother having an editor fix your plot holes and writing mistakes when you can just rewrite and publish your shitty book all over again?
Catherine: Edward jumps into action, moving so fast that none of the dullard, simple humans can follow his path with their stupid, useless eyes. Somehow he manages to smack her head against the pavement like a rag doll as he’s saving her. He looks up to see that the backside of the truck is now swinging around to come hit them.
“A word I’d never said before in the presence of a lady slid between my clenched teeth.”
We talking a curse word here or could it be anything? He going for the high score in Scrabble?
K: I mean, he just used the word “injudicious,” so probably.
Mari: I thought maybe anatomical? Like maybe just said, “scrotum!” It’s possible.
Catherine: Dear God.
He stops the van from hitting her cursed ass for the second time in ten seconds and then realizes that she’s halfway underneath it and he has to pull her out before he can put it down. He does this, while complaining the whole time, and then drops the van, which shatters all the windows even though Tyler is still in it. Edward was just thinking a second earlier that he couldn’t do too much damage to the van for fear of hurting the kid, even if he isn’t as stanky/interesting as Bella.
Edward asks Bella if she’s okay but restrains her against his body without letting her move away because he wants her to be ~safe~ even though the danger has passed. He inhales her scent and, for the first time, is grateful for the pain that it causes him. Luckily, she’s not bleeding, since he would have probably split her in half and sucked out the filling like an Oreo right there in the parking lot, but he worries that she has a concussion since he smacked her head against the pavement.
Suddenly, Bella asks him how he managed to get over to her so fast from across the parking lot and Edward sad faces, realizing that she’s suspicious of him now.
Mari: He’s surprised, too, and almost impressed because Bella is so observant, but like… bro, you literally told us you locked eyes. She looked at you, then saw the van. She didn’t “notice too much!” YOU WERE LOOKING AT EACH OTHER.
Catherine: He’s not that observant, himself.
He remembers that he’s supposed to be pretending to be human or whatever and lies that he was standing next to her.
“I knew from experience that if I was very confident as I lied, it made any questioner less sure of the truth.”
Yes that’s… how lying works, Stephenie.
Mari: It took Eddie 74 years of vamping to figure out that if you lie with confidence, it’s a better lie.
Catherine: Edward finally lets Bella move away from him so that he can get space from her smell. Edward stares her down and thinks more about how he’s such a good liar because he knows that you have to stare at people to lie good. He assumes that he was successful because Bella looks confused, not realizing that Bella is always confused and she’s still suspicious as hell. Students and teachers start trickling in and trying to move the van away so that Edward and Bella can get out. Edward thinks that Bella looks like she’s okay, but isn’t totally sure and wishes that Carlisle was there to make sure.
“My years of theoretical medical study were no match for his centuries of hands-on medical practice.”
Oh! Interesting! So when Mr. Banner wanted to do his fucking job and teach biology a few chapters ago, it was all, “His limited intellect is no match for my three degrees. Forsooth!” but now all of his medical practice is theoretical. I see.
K: I’m guessing this is because nobody actually wants Doogie Howser to be their doctor, even if he’s ginger and sparkles. But maybe it’s because Edward’s a condescending dick. Who’s to say!
Mari: Me! I’m to say: It’s both.
Annie: Co-signed.
Catherine: The bystanders manage to get the van pulled away but not before Bella accuses Edward of somehow getting over to her super fast again, and he tells her that he’ll explain everything later to shut her up. Bella gets loaded into an ambulance and Edward tries to surreptitiously smooth out the damage of his hand print in the side of the van with his foot somehow. Not clear how that would work. Emmett think-tells Edward that he’ll smooth out it better later, even though all of his siblings are pissed at him for interfering and preventing a child’s death. Missed these guys. (M: The good guys.)
Charlie shows up and, strangely, Edward realizes that he can’t hear Charlie’s thoughts either. Or, rather that he can’t hear them clearly. They’re “partially concealed” and he can “only make out the tenor and not the tone of them.” When you file down the Victoria construct of that sentence, I think what he means is that he only gets vague images from Charlie. I’m not sure this was ever mentioned in the original series? And it seems like the type of thing you would mention to your girlfriend about your mind-reading powers, especially since she always had that weird thing where she felt self-conscious that Edward couldn’t read her thoughts. Wouldn’t you be like, “Hey, I can’t really read your dad’s either. It’s probably just some genetic thing.” Am I forgetting him doing that at some point?
K: Yeah, no, I definitely don’t remember him being like “I can’t hear Charlie’s thoughts properly either. WEIRD.” at any point in the many MANY pages of this shit we’ve already read.
Mari: I briefly had a moment of “okay, okay, this is an interesting tidbit and definitely the kind of thing that feels like a value-add for a new book.” But yes, if you think about it for more than a moment, you realize that is 100% a thing that should’ve already come up, especially in conversation between Bella and Edward. So now it just feels like retcon.
Annie: I don’t recall from Twilight that Edward’s powers let him ‘see’ through someone’s eyes in real time, and again, that feels like something that should have come up? Did I blank that out or is this book full of cheatery narration to help fix plot holes and flow for this book?
Catherine: Definitely the second one.
Once they get to the hospital, Edward makes a beeline for Carlisle’s office and comes in so dour and stricken that Carlisle assumes he really did fuck up and yeet Bella out of the mortal coil. Edward calms him down and tells him that he just saved her. Carlisle tells him that he did the right thing, even if Bella is suspicious of him now. Edward says that he doesn’t think it will be hard to discredit her account of the accident if she does blab about the vampire stuff, since he smacked her head against the pavement. He says that he feels like a “cad” for even saying it, but I’m here to tell him that he didn’t have to pull out Ye Olde Thesaurus for this one, and the word he’s looking for is ‘dick.’ Carlisle lol’s that Edward has gone from being Bella’s possible murderer to her protector, and Edward lol’s with him in a creepy way like he does everything.
Mari: Imagine how many lol’s they would get if they realized that Edward wants to both murder her AND protect her!
Catherine: Edward waits outside Carlisle’s office while the latter goes to diagnose Bella without actually visiting her somehow. Edward thinks that Bella can’t see Carlisle because they look too much alike (because they are both vampires) and it’ll remind her of him, which might make her start talking. And then, like, five minutes later they both go in to talk to her, so I’m not sure where that assumption went. (M: Where all thoughts Stephenie Meyer has go soon after she writes them down: away.)
But before that, we have a scene of Edward listening in as Bella tells Tyler that Edward pulled her out of the way of the truck and Tyler thinking that Bella is pretty, which makes Edward so jealous he almost storms into the room to protect her virginity before he stops himself. (M: Mostly because a nurse walks in first. Bella’s virginity protection will have to wait.) Edward goes to look at her x-rays, despite that being illegal since he’s not a doctor (three degrees aside) and Carlisle catches him there.
Carlisle looks over the x-rays and decides that Bella is fine but notices that she has a lot of healed contusions and wonders how many times her mother dropped her on her head.
Annie: As the child of two parents who have acquired brain injuries, I can assure you, head trauma is hilarious. Almost as funny as mental health issues, misogyny and racism. Excellent work, Meyer. And we won’t even get into the whole patient-doctor confidentiality that you’re breaking just passing this information out.
Catherine: It’s amazing that we’re still learning new things about this series, for instance, Carlisle is also a dick.
Edward tells Carlisle that he’s going to talk to Bella to lie some more. When he reaches Bella’s room, she’s pretending to be asleep to avoid talking to Tyler. Tyler tells Edward that he’s sorry for lightly hitting him with a truck and Edward tells him not to worry about it and then accidentally smiles a little too wide, which makes Tyler shudder, I guess because he shows his fangs. Because, if you recall, humans have a biological drive to stay away from the vampires except when they don’t.
K: I mean, it could also be because he’s smiling like a fucking serial killer when he basically never smiles and it’s creeping Tyler out. It’s sure as shit creeping me out, so…
Mari: It could ALSO be because he says “no blood, no foul” and then smiles like blood is the most hilarious thing Edward has ever heard of. I’d shudder too.
Catherine: Carlisle comes into the room and, just as he’d predicted and then ignored, Bella immediately notices that they both look dead. Carlisle fingers Bella’s scalp to make sure that she doesn’t have any bumps, and Edward gets all jealous that he can’t grope her dome. Edward thinks about how Bella is brave for the 50th time even though he says it’s his first time noticing it. Bella snips a bit about how he gets to go back to school even though she’s being forced to go home and how she doesn’t want to see the students that are out in the waiting room to see if she’s okay.
I truly–and I’m not even joking– can’t tell if Bella is better or worse in this book. Obviously, she’s still terrible, but not being constantly subjected to the barrage of her insipid inner monologue is making her seem kinda….funnier? More sarcastic? More like a normal person who just kinda gets pulled into all of this against her will? Maybe it’s just because now I’m having to read the constant thoughts of a guy who thinks like an M.F.A student doing a modern retelling of Shakespeare and it’s making her dialogue seem refreshingly normal.
Mari: Part of the reason the movies are “better” than the books is because we don’t have to hear Bella’s thoughts. Any time we don’t have to hear Bella’s thoughts, it’s an improvement.
Catherine: GOD yes.
Bella begs her way out of staying longer and then Carlisle pretends to ignore her while she stomps over to Edward. She breathes in his face, and he gets a fang boner.
“Every time she was near me, it triggered my all my worst, most urgent instincts. Venom flowed in my mouth, and my body yearned to strike–to wrench her into my arms and crush her throat to my teeth.”
Seems like a healthy basis for a relationship.
K: I read as far as “Venom flowed into my mouth” and gagged.
Catherine: Bella asks to speak to Edward in the hall. He intends to be an asshole to her to get her to leave him alone so he does that, telling her that he saved her life so he doesn’t owe her anything. Bella whispers that he promised he’d tell her once they got to the hospital and that she needs to know why she’s lying for him. This is the most we’ve really seen Bella speak since she was introduced in this book and ya know what, never mind, I still hate her. I’m back in. (M: Fair.)
Bella tells him what she remembers, that he lifted the van off of her. Or, in other words, the truth, and he insists that no one will ever believe her if she tells them that. She says that she wasn’t planning on telling anyone. Edward thinks that he wants her to make up her own story because the truth is that he is an “undead nightmare straight from the pages of a horror novel,” which is too easy of a joke, even for me.
She asks him why he bothered saving her, and he answers that he doesn’t know, but he looks surprised rather than bitchy and memorizes her face lines one last time, before walking away, intending never to speak to her again.
Mari: Ah, yes, the only “plot” in this book is Edward forever intending to never speak to Bella again and then still speaking to her again. See you next time.
Corresponding Twilight Recap: Chapter 03 – Edward Cullen: Mushroom.
Next time on Midnight Sun: This book is not over in Chapter 04.
I am a 30-something year-old human woman who lives in Maine. I'm a freelance writer who mostly spends time that I should be doing that, watching T.V. I also love reading and comic books way too much.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
Fuchsia-haired, caffeine enthusiast, dog person, Raptors fan, sometimes blogger, music & social media geek, freelancer, human being. She/her.
