The Awakening / The Struggle (The Vampire Diaries, #1-2) in all things supernatural

Dec 31, 2009 Alyssa rated it liked it

Shelves: ya-loved, own

This book, was one I had been eagerly awaiting back at Christmas time. I'd been really looking forward to reading it, as the TV show had been fabulously debuting on the CW, and I'd been a massive fan before the hiatus. I asked for the first two books in the series for Christmas, almost guaranteed that I'd like them - I'd also read The Night World by the same author the previous summer, and had fallen in love.
To say the least, I was a tad disappointed.

This was a flat, boring omnibus. Top reviewer This book, was one I had been eagerly awaiting back at Christmas time. I'd been really looking forward to reading it, as the TV show had been fabulously debuting on the CW, and I'd been a massive fan before the hiatus. I asked for the first two books in the series for Christmas, almost guaranteed that I'd like them - I'd also read The Night World by the same author the previous summer, and had fallen in love.
To say the least, I was a tad disappointed.

This was a flat, boring omnibus. Top reviewers across the nation spoke about this book as if it were the best teen vamp-fiction out there, when all I have to say is that I would most likely not reread this, unless the upcoming books in the series prove to be better.
I despised Elena. She was so artificial, and her love for Stefan (if that's what she wants to call it instead of weird, stalker-ish behavior) was insulting to read, and her obsession with Damon even more disturbing. She was a colorless girl - one-sided and calculating, with a true mean-girl mind - and I found myself hurling every time she spoke. The friendships in these two novels were totally unrealistic - I'm not sure, even back in the 90s', when this series had begun, if groups of teenagers were so annoying in their "we'll always stick together" ways - and I, for the second reason in the books, wanted to retch at every mention of them "making it through the tough" together. Blah. It's even more pathetic to say that I liked Matt Honeycutt the most, even him being the small secondary character, he had a lot more character than our main protagonists.
The relationship with Stefan and Elena was purely based on looks and appearances, popularity and selfishness. Elena had wanted Stefan for all the wrong reasons - his unavailability, his sexiness, his automatic, unreasonable quick jump into popularity - and Stefan has been searching for Elena because he looked like some dead girlfriend from way back when. Elena, the blond, plastic, bitchy cheerleader had, after only a few encounters with Stefan, found herself "head over heels in love" with our brooding, intelligent, TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE vampire hottie, who was feeling the same, likewise.
Oh yeah, so Elena's parents' death had made us want to feel bad for poor, poor Elena. Ha, I felt no sympathy. With other orphaned characters, I felt sorry and I wanted good for them; in Vampire Diaries, I wanted Elena to fall. And fall hard. She traded some who-knew guy for a lifelong friendships, for the lives of her best friends who would travel to the ends of the earth for her, and she thought nothing but a thin wall of guilt for that - not enough to make me fully understand this blond goddess.
Damon comes in now, the bad, bad vampire (the only real vampire I've realized in the past few series, leaving out my beloved Vampire Academy, though) and he sweeps her off her feet (LITERATELY!) and Elena considers him another fraction in her love equation, in deciding whether or not to embrace the vampire in Stefan's really, truly good soul. God, I must've rolled my eyes three hundred times reading this pair of horribly written books.
In the reviews I'll continue writing for LJ Smith, I'll probably have this part mentioned countless times - I HATE her writing style. Truthfully, I don't like third-person narrations, but for some reason, Miss Smith writes more differently, aggravating me in the worst of ways. Plus, it doesn't help that all the slang is long past, and all the descriptions and products have no meaning to me.

I did like it, for the vampirism. It showed the different complications of being a vampire, and I liked having a peek into more vampire fiction. I also enjoyed the presences of Elena's close friends: Meridith, Bonnie, Caroline, Matt ( ! ). and their characters. They were more advanced than the main characters, and even they had their own problems. ...more

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