My daughter is busy reading the Twilight series and because of that I discovered that there is another book in the series which is less well known and a bit different from the original set. It is the Life and Death book, which was written on the 10th anniversary and takes the Twilight story but flips it around. In this version the vampire is a female (Edythe) and the new kid in town who falls in love with the vampire is a male (Beau).

When I saw this I was immediately intrigued. Yes I am a fan of the Twilight series, I think it is well written and the characters are well developed (I am of the opinion that you should read the books before you watch the movies). So the idea that the characters had been flipped fascinated me. My first thought was that it would not work, and truthfully for the first few pages I was not convinced but as I read on I actually started to enjoy the character flip. I enjoyed the fact that the strong vampire was a female. It does take our normal stereotypes and kind of say “stuff it” lets have some fun and make the girl strong, powerful and ultimately the one who gets to decide if the boy lives or dies.

There are a few other character flips that I found interesting (Beau’s parents stay the same) but Doctor Cullen is a female, also the vampires with powers have flipped genders (that was also interesting) and the wolf gene is now passed down to daughters instead of sons (again an interesting flip). So all the way through the book who have role reversals. I must be honest I did really enjoy the idea of the wolf gene going to the daughters.

The story line sticks to the original plot and there are the same main events (sitting together, going to meet the family etc etc) but it does deviate when Beau goes to meet the tracker here the story is “sped up” a bit and Beau becomes a vampire and they tell everyone that Bean died (I did find the scene where Beau’s parents are carrying his coffin sad).

All in all I found this an interesting idea, the possibilities of what could happen with the characters flipping genders is interesting and it actually mad me think of a of other stories and wondered how those would develop if the genders where flipped. I think if you are a fan of the original Twilight series then you will find this extra book interesting to read.

In terms of reading ages, I think it is suitable for secondary ages, there are no explicit scenes.