They’re two quite different books, but each is a blockbuster featuring vampires and each is reviewed in a major national newspaper and both books are being published within days of each other.

In USA Today, Carol Memmott goes with Stephenie Meyer’s The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, which was published on Saturday (you can read it free online here until midnight, July 5th).

Reading Bree’s story enriches our reading of the Twilight saga and will enhance enjoyment of the Eclipse movie. Parts of the novella are woven into the film…

Bree Tanner is a brilliant reminder that Twilight‘s vampires, despite physical beauty and passion, are tragic creatures. Meyer strips them of romanticism through a teenage girl who never had a chance for happiness in her first, or second, life.

In the New York Times, Janet Maslin turns her attention to Justin Cronin’s The Passage, in a review that deftly summarizes the story, while hinting at a few irritations — it’s long, overuses italics, and, rather than ending, sets the reader up for more long books (it is planned as a trilogy).

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