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I love Jake Abel narrating of midnight sun, he really sells Edward struggle very well,so much so you buy it. Even the silly parts of the book seem cool in Jake's voice

I’ve only heard excerpts but it seems like he did do a good job with the material he had!

The narrator of an audiobook can really make or break the story, the same way a good actor can sometimes sell a silly plot point. Like, vampires are kind of inherently ridiculous if you think about them for more than two seconds, but actors have been able to make them alluring and sexy anyway. (”I’m so thirsty for blood!” is absurd on its face but acting and narration can make it horrifying or sexy or sad). And a narrator can sell a silly plot point or contrived story by infusing the narration with the right emotion. It makes it seem more convincing to hear a person say it and seemingly mean it. 

And a poor narrator can likewise ruin a good story.

"I watched her as she lifted her face to the light rain with her eyes closed, a slight smile on her lips. What was she thinking? Something about this action seemed off, and I quickly realized why the posture looked unfamiliar to me. Normal human girls wouldn't raise their faces to the drizzle that way; normal human girls usually wore makeup, even here in this wet place." I call bull. Bella "hates cold and rain so much" Swan isn't going to DO this! Plus all the "Not like Other Girls" nonsense.

Yeah that's. . . that's a quote.

I know my experiences aren't universal, but the group of girls I hung out with in high school didn't tend to wear much make up. I pretty much never did except maybe eyeliner (less to do with anything emo and more my obsession with Ancient Egypt) and I can't think of anyone in my friend group off the top of my head who wore obvious make up. I can't recall sharply enough to firmly deny the use of foundation/concealer or like, mascara or something. But I don't feel like make-up wearing was as ubiquitous as Edward is making it out to be.

However, the "not like other girls" nonsense aside, this is hilarious, because Edward is all like, in awe of her glorious uniqueness and beauty, admiring her for living in the moment and feeling the rain on her face, when I'm pretty sure this is the matching scene from Bella's POV:

GIRL WAS LOOKING UP TO WASH THE SWEAT FROM HER FACE after freaking out during blood typing.

Sometimes the dual narration provides fun bits like this. Edward, flailing over her perfection. Bella, using the rain to get panic sweat off her face.

I’m new here so expect 100 asks coming your way the next few days, (99% related to Rosalie). Obviously I love your blog…

First, I’ve been listening to Midnight Sun on audible and sometimes I just stop and think “Seriously Edward!? Are you STILL talking?” Any thoughts on the repetitive nature of the prose? Did SM not have to go through an editor?

First of all, welcome!

And yeah, like we get it Edward, you're tortured, she's perfect, you're not worthy. It reminded me of the original books where Bella's constantly going on about how beautiful Edward is, how she's an ogre compared to him, how he's so gorgeous she forgets to breathe. We get it. We got it the first four hundred times.

I think this is one of the pitfalls of first person narration: you've got to rely on that inner monologue, and if you're not careful it gets really repetitive really quickly. I suppose the argument can be made this is "realistic" or a "stylistic choice" and Edward is supposed to sound like that, but it's probably just a function of SM, despite her outstanding success as a writer, not being like, you know, the best at it. She's a good storyteller. She obviously tapped into something to have us all still talking about it. And she comes up with some beautiful imagery here and there. But she's clumsy as a writer when it comes to craft.

As far as I know she has editors and all that, but printing Midnight Sun was basically like printing money, so they were gonna let her do whatever. People had been waiting for it for over a decade AND everyone was stuck at home in quarantine. It was gonna make money no matter what. It was sort of the attitude with Breaking Dawn, too. If you read her interviews talking about writing the series, she originally wrote Twilight and then "a bunch of epilogues" which eventually became something that called Forever Dawn which was basically Breaking Dawn (E/B get married, have Renesmee, Jacob imprints, Bella becomes a vampire, confrontation with Volturi). She showed it to her agent or publishers or whoever and they were like "ehhhhhhh marriage and babies aren't really YA, can we keep Bella in high school?" so she wrote New Moon and Eclipse AFTER she already basically wrote Breaking Dawn. They originally wanted a trilogy that ended with Eclipse, but by then the series was making so much money that when SM pressed for a fourth book so she could have her Forever/Breaking Dawn ending, they were swimming in money and were like sure whatever!!

She has said she wouldn't write more from Edward's POV though because being in his head "gave her anxiety" and it was just too much for her. But I do think a more aggressive editing could have helped focus the narration and cut down on the repetitiveness a bit. I just don't imagine anyone was that bothered, they were just counting their money and doing a swan (ha) dive into a pile of gold coins like Scrooge McDuck.