The Vampire Diaries: The Return: Nightfall

The Vampire Diaries: The Return: Nightfall by L.J. Smith

*Sigh* to relive childhood memories. That's exactly what this series is to me, well the first four books are. The original bulk of this series came out when I was about 10 and I devoured them back then as I did now. On the up side I didn't have to wait for the next installment to come out this time.

I really picked this series back up because of the show on the WB. Something was tickling my brain when I saw the title of the series and then the character names sounded familiar. A quick wikipedia check later it dawned on me I'd read this before, before it was cool for teenagers to love vampires.

This installment of the series (spoiler alert if you haven't read the first four books) takes place a few days after the end of Dark Reunion where Elena comes back from the dead, again. I think I was happier with the original ending of the series, cause this book sucked. The author was completely out of touch with her characters this entire book. Damon goes from being lovable bad guy to being a complete jerk that you wish would get staked. Stephan is just kind of there to move the plot along. Elena spends too much time thinking about how special she is. And Elena's side kicks are just more pawns to move the plot.

Then we have continuity issues. The original series was 10 years ago and suddenly in a week everyone has a cell phone with video conferencing abilities. My phone can't even do that. And we suddenly have the internet. Last books we had to go to the library and look things up. A bit of a problem here!

It took forever for this book to get moving. I seriously almost put it down after the first 200 pages several times. Sadly I feel like this book is the biggest afterthought ever and was only written cause the author wanted to make a few more bucks off the characters cause she agreed to allow a TV series to be made.

There will be more Vampire Diaries books from the ending given in this one, but I won't be reading them. Even looking back on the original series it wasn't that great. The characters are hallow and shallow, it's annoying. At this point I will be watching the TV series, I can't believe I'm saying this, it's better than the book.