The Vampire Diaries #1 The Awakening SPOILERS

The Awakening

( The Vampire Diaries #1)

4/10

Let's start with the tagline of the blurb:
A Love Triangle of Unspeakable Horror... 

AHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

NO.

Unspeakable horror is Salem's Lot that you read one night and spend 2 months being afraid of inviting people into your house.
Unspeakable horror is watching a thriller on TV and have your husband who has fallen asleep jerk up and start talking nonsense like he's possessed, (Yes it happened to me. Yes I shat myself).
Unspeakable horror is reading this thread on Reddit and trying to sleep without a night light.

This book however, in general and its love triangle in particular are not even "I saw a fuckin spider on the bath tap and now I can't wash the shampoo off my hair"-horror. Actually it's not horror at all. It's your standard YA vampire fiction only you can't call it cliché because it's so fuckin old that it's probably one of the first books on the subject.

So with this out of the way, let's proceed to the actual review!

Something awful is going to happen today.

That’s how the first book of the Vampire Diaries series begins. Surprisingly that awful thing is not picking up those books to read. Yes they were a bit cheesy but it wasn't that bad.

Elena, the protagonist of this story, has just returned home from her European vacation at the start of a new school year. There’s an impending doom in the book from its very first page that the writer actually manages to communicate rather well but Elena shakes off any dark feelings as she returns to school and resumes her rightful place as the “school Ice queen”.  OK, first of all if you want to pick this book up because of the TV show, don't bother. There are very little similarities to the hit TV show (and to be honest I liked the show storyline better. Book!Elena is a Barbie doll. She’s perfect, has everything and every boy she wants. Even her description - blond hair blue eyes - matches. But she has some added tragedy in her life so as not to make her a Mary Sue - more on that later. I'm not sure if it really works though. To be honest, with me being a geeky/outcast girl since primary school I couldn’t empathise with her at all.

Anyway, the school has a new student, the mysterious Italian, Stefan who is gorgeous and very well dressed. Of course. They always have to be tall dark and handsome.  And…. he wasn’t impressed by Elena’s presence at all. Oh no! SHOCK HORROR! And that is a first for her so out of spite she just MUST have him at any cost. Elena plots with her friends ways to obtain the dark young man.  In the meantime a number of mysterious attacks occur in Fell’s Church increasing the sense of menace in the story and Stefan avoids Elena like the plague.

In the homecoming dance Stefan invites Elena’s ex-best friend/nemesis Caroline and Elena to spite him starts fooling around and drinking with the school tard/football player Tyler Smallwood and his group of friends, Vicky Bennet and a guy called Dick (who, well, is less a dick than Tyler). Anyway, they run off to the old graveyard for shits and giggles and after some stupid jokes and all, Vicky and Dick run off to make out and Tyler ends up trying to rape Elena until Stefan Salvatore saves her and beats Tyler to a pulp. They finally hook up afterwards after Stefan explains why he had been avoiding her: she reminds him of someone he loved and has died. Eventually they do end up together. Yeah, I know... You didn't see that coming either!

 

The plot builds up from that point, ending the book in a huge cliffhanger that would have led me rip it to pieces and throw it on the wall if I didn’t have the second book at hand. If you give this a shot then make sure that you own all four books before starting the first.

At this point there will be the inevitable comparison to Twilight. Which is totally off since TVD is a whooping 14 years older. Girl meets vampire boy and instantly gets the hots for him but he is distant with her, blah blah blah.  The similarities are there but Elena is way more believable a character than Bella will ever be (seriously a very clumsy and unpopular girl who has all the school visit her after an accident? Dude, get real) In fact Elena’s character would probably be a plain Mary sue too hadn’t it been for her vanity and self-centered character. However, despite her petty attitude she grows on the reader as the book advances.

In general it's not a bad book per se, but only considering it's one of the first teen vampire romance books. If you want something completely new like you've never read again that bashes all cliches in the mouth then go pick Guy Gavriel Kay's books. 

You can thank me later.