The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner

What I loved about Stephenie Meyer's novella, The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, was that while reading, I instantly wanted to open up Eclipse and compare Bree and Bella's descriptions of one another. So that is what I did :]

Bree-
"It was her-the human I'd been hunting just a few minutes ago. The scent my whole body had been focused toward. The sweet, wet scent of the most delicious blood I'd ever tracked. My mouth and throat fell like they were on fire.
I tried wildly to hold on to my reason- to focus on the fact that Jasper was just waiting for me to jump up again so that he could kill me- but only part of me could do it. I felt like I was about to pull into two halves trying to keep myself here.
The human named Bella stared at me with stunned brown eyes. Looking at her made it worse. I could see the blood flushing through her thin skin. I tried to look anywhere else, but my eyes kept circling back to her...
The girl met my stare, but her expression was so different from what it should have been. Though I could feel that my lips were curled back from my teeth, though I trembled with the effort to stop myself from springing at her, she did not look afraid of me. Instead she seemed fascinated. It almost looked like she wanted to speak to me-like she had a question she wanted me to answer."

Bella-
"The girl was curled into a small ball beside the flames, her arms wrapped around her legs. She was very young. Younger than me-she looked maybe fifteen, dark-haired and slight. Her eyes were focused on me, and the irises were a shocking, brilliant red. Much brighter than Riley's, almost glowing. They wheeled wildly, out of control...
After a second of fruitless searching, my gaze crept back to the young female vampire.  She was still watching me, her eyes half-mad.
I met the girl's stare for a long moment. Chin-length dark hair framed her face, which was alabaster pale. It was hard to tell if her features were beautiful, twisted as they were by rage and thirst. The feral red eyes were dominant- hard to look away from. She glared at me viciously, shuddering and writhing every few seconds.
I stared at her, mesmerized, wondering if  I were looking into a mirror of my future."

The brilliance of this story is how Meyer could take a seemingly unimportant character, such as Bree, and create her whole world that was as believable and mesmerizing as that of Bella's. It was really interesting to see the dark side of vampires for a change, and still be engrossed in the story so much that the different dynamics of the red eyed versus the yellow eyed was not an issue. Even though readers know how this tragic tale will end, one still cannot put this yet another Meyer masterpiece down. And, I must admit, I almost liked Bree's voice better than Bella's. I know, shocking, but it was a nice change of narrator.

All in all, a definite must-read for Twilight fans.