Twilight: 10 Things Only Book Fans Know About Bella

Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight saga acquired a cult following shortly after its release and became a trailblazer in the vampire fiction genre. However, the appeal of the series lay not only in the supernatural but also in the swoon-worthy romance between softly beautiful and wholly human Bella Swan and handsome Edward. Bella narrated her fairytale romance in her innocently honest, but appropriately sarcastic voice when needed. Her character became legendary — every girl wanted to be cutely clumsy, pale like a doll, just a bit self-deprecating, and obsessively in love with a vampire.

While some audiences found her character slightly one-dimensional, there was more to Bella than met the eye. The Twilight movies did their best to portray Kristen Stewart’s Bella faithfully, but there was a lot to the chocolate-eyed protagonist that fans would only know if they had cracked open the books.

10 She Can Cook

Bella isn’t shown cooking in any of the five Twilight Saga movies, but she was quite a chef in the books. While she and Charlie got meals at the local diner in the movies, book Bella cooked up a storm of delicious food for them at home — chicken enchiladas, steak and potatoes, lasagna, and spaghetti were regular fare at Casa Swan.

It made complete sense that Bella was a good cook since she was a natural caretaker. She basically raised her flighty mother in Arizona instead of it being the other way around, and Charlie too couldn’t cook a decent meal to save his life.

9 She Can’t Stand Blood

The irony of Bella’s aversion to blood wasn’t lost on any bookish Twi-hards, but movie buffs wouldn’t know that Bella actually fainted at the sight of blood in Twilight. In the book, she claimed that she could almost smell the metallic scent of blood, which entertained Edward to no end.

While doing a blood typing experiment in Biology class, the clumsy protagonist smelt blood and passed out, and had to be taken to the nurse by Edward (who took over the task from a jealous Mike Newton).

8 Her Blood Type Is O Positive

Bella’s blood was distinctively better smelling to most vampires than the blood of other humans, and even more so for Edward. Her sweet-smelling blood was his own personal brand of heroin, and it almost made him kill her, but his love for her overcame his baser predatory instincts and his thirst.

A small but important fact in the books was that Bella’s blood type was O Positive, and it was this O Positive blood that drove her into the clutches of James, Victoria, and Laurent in the series.

7 She Reads Classics

To fit every detail of a book into a movie is impossible, and one such detail that the movies leave out is how much Bella loved classic books, especially Jane Austen. On a warm day in Forks, she stepped out to read in her garden and had a tough time picking between Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Mansfield Park.

This was mainly because all the male characters were named Edward or Edmund, whom she was trying not to think about. She eventually picked Wuthering Heights. In Eclipse, Bella also compared herself to mean and inconsiderate Cathy from the Bronte classic.

6 The Scar From James’ Bite Had Special Qualities

When James bit Bella at the climax of Twilight, Edward made the dangerous decision of sucking the venom out of Bella’s body, but the bite left a crescent-shaped scar on Bella’s wrist.

While the scar can be seen in all the movies, what viewers didn’t know was that the scar was always paler and a few degrees colder than the rest of her skin — due to its vampiric nature — and it glittered like diamonds when exposed to sunlight.

5 Her Transformation Into A Vampire Was Extremely Painful

Once a vampire has bitten a human being with the intention of turning them into a vampire, the transformation process is agonizingly painful. While Bella almost died while giving birth to Renesmee, and Edward injected her with venom just in time, the pain that she experienced is not shown in the movies.

All the Cullens had screamed and shouted their way through their conversions, but because Bella had been injected with morphine during the delivery, she was forced into stillness while her body exploded in pain. While her broken bones healed and her heart went cold, she was trapped by the morphine and couldn’t express her torment out loud.

4 She Considered Her Move To Forks As Exile

While the movies manage to capture a bit of Bella’s dislike for “wet and cold” weather and things, they don’t quite show the extent of her initial dislike for Forks. She loved the warmth and sunshine of Phoenix but sacrificed it all for the happiness of her mother who wanted to be on the road with Phil.

She detested Forks (in her own words) and thought of her move to the rainy town as a self-enforced exile of sorts. She didn’t like how gloomy Forks was, and her relationship with Charlie was awkward at best. It was her meeting with Edward that made her warm up to the cold little town.

3 She Broke Down When She Finally Chose Edward Over Jacob

In Eclipse, Bella finally admitted her feelings for Jacob and realized that she loved both the werewolf as well as the vampire. Although her love for Edward was far greater than her love for Jacob, she could not ignore the latter and had to make a choice. She chose Edward, and she was already engaged to him, but her choice was not an easy one.

In the movie, Bella only looks slightly regretful of her lost future with Jacob, but in the books, she spent hours weeping for her lost love after she made her choice — in Edward’s arms. Bella broke down for hours and had to be comforted by Edward about the other man that she was in love with.

2 She Was Careful About Equality In Her Relationship

Bella had a bit of an unhealthy complex in her relationship with Edward. To her, it didn’t make sense that the handsome, intelligent vampire would choose her as his partner. She always felt as though she was less than him (even though he believed the very opposite), hence she made sure that she maintained a strict balance between them in the relationship.

Edward was also wealthy while she was not, so she refused to accept any presents from him, because she felt she would never be able to get him anything as valuable as he would get her, and she believed that his presence alone was the greatest gift of all. Bella disliked tipping the scale.

1 Her Transformation Erased Her Clumsiness

It was no secret that Bella had two left feet. She had no real sense of balance and was highly accident-prone. Because of this, she stayed far away from any athletic activity, as her lack of hand-eye coordination only led to herself and others around her getting injured.

However, as soon as she changed into a vampire, her clumsiness disappeared and was replaced by fluidity and grace — even more so than the usual vampire, according to Edward. This only cemented the belief further that Bella was just a little different, and was born to become a vampire because that suited her more than humanity did.

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