The Blessing and The Curse

The Blessing and the Curse

by The Black Arrow

I opened this one 2 days ago on a whim, and I knew I was going to write about it here before I was finished with the first chapter.

The story opens with Bella driving back into Forks after a long absence. She is not coming back for happy reasons.

She is engaged to Mike Newton, a lawyer she has worked with in her job as a court reporter. You can tell right away the relationship is not a great one, and I got the impression from the description of their lives that she is using the relationship with Mike as a band-aid or distraction from something, or someone else. We all know who that someone is.

Bella and Edward have grown up together their entire lives. The relationship between them is not the typical one you would expect under those circumstances, because there is a vast power imbalance between them.

Why? Because Edward can read Bella’s mind just by touching her skin.

Due to tragic circumstances (seriously, tragic. I cried more than once while reading this), they are thrown together after not seeing each other for years. The sexual chemistry is definitely there (this is still a version of Edward we’re talking about here), along with lingering feelings of resentment from an incident that happened  a few years earlier that was the catalyst for the long period of no contact.

This is not the average cookie-cutter fic. This is one of the best written things I’ve ever read. Ever. This author could honestly be published one day, I would bet money on it. I can’t even describe how this story made me feel while I was reading it; it impacted me in a big way. I laughed, I cried, I tingled. This is my favorite Edward and Bella out of all the fics I’ve read, and I don’t say that lightly.

If you’ve never read fan fiction before and never before felt like you should, read this. I promise you will not regret it at all. This reads more like a book than a fan fiction, and the relationship between Edward and Bella is not cheesy, not unbelievable, not perfect. It’s extremely flawed, but believably so. If you only read one fic that I rec, ever, let it be this one.

Story link in title heading.

Links: Author’s ff.net page, Author’s Twitter, Story thread on Twilighted.net