The One With the FanFiction (or "Wide Awake" by AngstGoddess003)

Genre: Twilight Fanfiction/ New Adult
Publication: 2009 at Fanfiction.net
Format: PDF Kindle
Cover Rating: 2/5 Stars
Links: Goodreads

From Goodreads: Edward and Bella have dark pasts that leave them severely emotionally scarred, with nightmares that force them to stay awake. They meet and begin to form a bond during the night hours.


My Thoughts: When I used to hear the word "fanfiction" I would visibly cringe and gag. I couldn't stand the thought of just some rando butchering my beloved characters from a favorite series, let alone reading it. Then, one of my very good bookish friends recommended Wide Awake. My automatic reaction was to crinkle my nose and politely tell her I didn't dig FF, however I knew for a fact that this girl had excellent taste in books. In fact, our GR shelves were almost identical. So, I decided to just shelve it on my "maybe-probably-never-read-list". And I'm glad I did.

After the whole Twilight craze of 2009-2012, I became completely turned off from the series. Sure, I went to the movies, but it had become more of a "is this over yet?" type of deal. It just got TOO big. Of course, I still defended the books (after all, I fell in love with the series first like most bookish snobs). But I was in no hurry to ever go back and re-read them anytime soon. To put it bluntly, I was just sick of them.

So after a couple of years of not fangirling hardcore over Edward/Jacob, I decided that I kind of missed the characters, but I still didn't really feel the urge to reread the whole series again. That's when I remembered Wide Awake. I'll be honest, I didn't really expect to get past the first few pages without rolling my eyes and shutting my Kindle down. But once I started the story... it evolved into something completely different and so NOT Twilight. You could just slap some different names on these guys and go publish this book easy. There's NO real connection to the Twilight world, besides the character names. I mean, had it not been labeled under FanFiction, I would have thought I was accidentally pirating a really good New Adult book.

There's no vampires. No uh-oh accidental vampire babies. In fact, there's no supernatural at all. We simply have a very fragile girl named Bella who's dealing with the murder over her mom and the circumstances surrounding it, and a very self destructive, bad boy named Edward who has his own dark pasts involving the loss of his father and abandonment of his mother. Because of their emotional trauma, both Edward and Bella have developed sever insomnia (along with a slew of other psychological problems). The only solution they have found is comfort in each other as they wait out the night together and try to hold on to their sanity until morning. What develops is a very unstable relationship, but one you hope for none the less.

I just could not put this story down for anything in the world. It had it's faults- for instance, there was a good portion of the middle of the book that I thought just dragged on and we could have done without, but overall the story was just too great not to love. I highly recommend this one to anyone who loves a good, angsty romance (even if they're not Twilight fans).

My Rating: 4/5 Stars