The Awakening / The Struggle by L.J. Smith

Presents the first two volumes in the Vampire Diaries series, in which popular and beautiful high school senior Elena finds herself torn between two vampire brothers, the dark and brooding Stefan who wants to protect her from the horrors of his past and the dangerously attractive Damon, who is determined to use her to get revenge on his brother.

I like this series a lot but it should have ended with book three. The fourth book was just really pointless and was more or less a repeat of what the last three books had been saying. However, it didn't take away from the rest of the series - it just didn't add anything.

It was interesting, and Damon is still hot, but it's poorly written, not intriguing, and nowhere near as awesome as the tv show. A rarity!

If you only want to read this book because you watched and LOVED the TV show - don't do it! It's VERY different from the TV show and I kept thinking that it wasn't right, that the book was wrong. But of course it wasn't - the TV show has made the storyline more complex. The storyline in the book is very basic and very unrealistic. I feel the book could have been written in one book instead of 2 or 3.

I was very disappointed - if you want to enjoy this book, only read it if you are under 15 years old and haven't watched the TV show.