Midnight Sun

We're given an absurd retcon for Edward's creeptastic behaviour: he knows he's being a stalkerish incel, so surely his actions should be forgiven.

Still, it helps - there's no escaping how toxic the “romance” is when you have to sit through 658 pages of Edward's internal monologues. Do I love Bella more or want to kill her more?: it's clear the coin could flip either way. The book casts this “love story” in an appropriately darker light.

Hot take: Midnight Sun is a better read than Twilight because we dislike apologists more than fundamentalists. The apologist's mental gymnastics to defend the indefensible (“yes, this 104 old virgin has fallen in love with me, a milquetoast teenager, but that's not downright ephebophilic because he was frozen at 17...never mind the decades of life experience between us”) grates on us more than the fundamentalist's shameless championing of their doctrine. Midnight Sun is at least not as intellectually dishonest...Edward knows what he's doing is wrong, but that won't stop him.