They didn’t seem all that complex to me–even brooding, fighting-against-his-nature Stefan. I also wasn’t annoyed with the love triangle because, to me, it wasn’t truly a love triangle it was more a by-product of what was going on plot-wise.Īs for the characters, they weren’t anything that exciting or unique to me. Elena and Stefan’s romance was super cheesy to me and I think it was a product of it’s time (the first Vampire Diaries novel was published in 1991). I’m not sure how many of you have read old romance novels from the late 80s/90s but they are drastically different from the romance novels you get today.

What I didn’t really like about the series was the romance. It wasn’t always happy-go-lucky in this series and I liked that. I like how there is a villain and I like that actual dangerous things happen and sometimes they have disastrous consequences. It makes things creepy and darker than some of the other vampire series out there.

Yet Vampire Diariesfeatures your blood drinking, bat-changing vampires who are up to no-good. I know that there is lots of disagreements over how vampires are portrayed in books/popular culture but I’ve never really minded these alterations to what I call “modern vampires”. One thing I really loved about Vampire Diariesis that it is a darker series where evil is always lurking. I had the combined volumes I used for the covers for this post so I really have a hard time differentiating the plot of each book because it just seems like one big story–which is what a series is really–but what I’m trying to say is that it is all one big blur so don’t ask me about individual books!

I can’t remember if I read these books before or after Twilight I’m pretty sure it was after but definitely before the show first aired. There are a number of spin-offs that I have never read…find out why below… Also, I want to be clear that I am only rating the original 4 Vampire Diaries novels. PLEASE NOTE: First and foremost, I read these books a looooonnnngggg time ago. Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal, Romance, Supernatural, Vampires, Magic, Witches # of Books: 4 (The Awakening, The Struggle, The Fury, Dark Reunion)

The Wikipedia page for the series has some interesting statements about how this series and the spin-offs are published. There are a number of spin-off series some written by L.J. Series Review: Is this series worth your time? Does it get better as the novels progress? Or does it get worse? Find out below:

The Struggle by L.J. Smith