The Vampire Diaries: The Awakening and The Strugge by LJ Smith

Once again I've fallen into the trap of pop culture. I watched the first episode of the new CW series and was curious enough that I picked up the books and read the entire series before the next episode.

This book actually contained the first two books of the series, The Awakening and The Struggle. And after reading the books it's apparent that the series is only loosely based on the books, as there are a lot of differences between the two. I think it might actually be more interesting if they followed the books a little closer. There's a lot of good stuff that happens in the book that hasn't in the series. I realized we're only 3 episodes in, but there are some things, such as how Elena and Stefan finally get together that are much more interesting in the book.

When I first started reading these books I thought I was going to hate them, mostly because I hated Elena's character at first. When the series first starts she's selfish, snobby, stuck-up and self-centered and only wants Stefan for the challenge. As the series progresses though she becomes much more generous and caring.

Another thing I found interesting as I read these books was just how much Stephenie Meyer borrowed from this series when writing Twilight. The early relationship between Elena and Stefan is so similar to Bella and Edward because Stefan tries to avoid Elena and even acts harshly, despite his attraction to her. This doesn't change until Stefan has to rescue Elena from an incident involving another character, coincidentally named Tyler. There are many other things I found similar between the two series, but won't go into here.

Overall this wasn't a bad book. It's not the best book I've read, but it was interesting and a quick read. It was compelling enough that it was hard to put down once I started reading, and I continued reading through the whole series fairly quickly. If you enjoyed the Twilight books you'll probably enjoy this, which was a forerunner to the Meyer series, although I think Meyer's writing is a little more polished than Smith's.