Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Review: Vampire Diaires: The Awakening by L.J. Smith

Elena: the golden girl, the leader, the one who can have any boy she wants.

Stefan: brooding and mysterious, he seems to be the only one who can resist Elena, even as he struggles to protect her from the horrors that haunt his past.

Damon: sexy, dangerous, and driven by an urge for revenge against Stefan, the brother who betrayed him. Determined to have Elena, he'd kill to possess her.

The Vampire Diaries television show is my one guilty pleasure. I generally don't watch much TV, with most of my time spent either stuck in a book (which may or may not be a textbook) or on Facebook or something else on the internet. I just don't have the patience usually to sit down and watch long movies or series that span on forever. But for some reason, I absolutely adore this show! Probably because its just like a YA novel in a lot of ways. Now as for the book, I'd been putting it off because of how different it seemed from the show.  But as I soon found out after I finally read it, different is not necessarily a bad thing.

L.J. Smith has crafted an novel which, despite being a bit slow to start, is a pretty enjoyable read. This book was first published almost 20 years ago and you can definitely tell. Its writing style is a lot simpler in a way from the YA books of today and some things are a little too cliche- Elena falls in love with Stefan way too fast (or at least says those 3 words wayyyyyy too early!) and her friendship with Meredith and Bonnie seems so overly...girly and nice? It just doesn't seem realistic to me. And their plotting to get Stefan reminded me of 12 year olds, not high school seniors.

Overall though, this book was pretty good. The suspense littered throughout the novel was great (even though I knew what was going to happen thanks to the show) and the ending was definitely a cliff hanger worthy of the television show- its probably why they publish the first two books together now, so readers don't sit there going "OMG what?!!". Definitely not a bad read even with a few flaws.

Overall:  ♥♥♥
Published: Originally published by HarperPaperbacks in 1991.

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