The Vampire Diaries: The Struggle
2 April 2010
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Product Description
Torn between two vampire brothers Damon: determined to make Elena his, he’d kill his own brother to possess her. Stefan: desperate for the power to destroy Damon, and protect Elena, he gives in to his thirst for human blood. Elena: the girl who can have anyone finds herself in the middle of a love triangle . . . one that might turn deadly. … More >>
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These books are getting way to out dated and too mushy, where’s the action and where’s the twisted romance? The author must be really sick with how this book was written.
Rating: 1 / 5
I purchased this book along with The Awakening for my daughter as part of her Christmas gifts. She had asked for both. When I received the book, I should have checked it over carefully. Having always been pleased with Amazon purchases, I quickly wrapped the books for her to open Christmas morning. Much to our dismay, this book has several torn pages and is missing pages 47 through 50 something. Of course I purchased it in Nov. so the 30 day return time is past. I realize it is my fault for not double checking my order, but I do hope everyone else will always check theirs and not do like me assuming things will always be good. My daughter was terribly disappointed and so was I. I now have a book no one will want.
Rating: 1 / 5
“The Struggle” is the second book in L.J. Smith’s “Vampire Diaries” series, and like all middle books, it suffers from a sense of displacement. It begins in the centre of the story and it ends in the centre of the story, and so one needs both the previous book and the following one in order to make sense of it.
The premise is hopelessly melodramatic: the beautiful blonde Elena (what, you expected an L. J. Smith heroine that *wasn’t* stunning?!) is caught between two vampire brothers, the angelic Stefan and the demonic Damon. Though she loves Stefan she is equally attracted to Damon, and I’m wincing whilst writing this, such is the corniness of the situation. Elena reminds the brothers of a girl they both sought after whilst they were human: the vampiric Katherine who Turned them both, but then killed herself when they wouldn’t cease their feud. Now the triangle is replaying itself out once more in contemporary Fell’s Church, but with a few differences, namely the presence of another Power wrecking havoc upon the citizens. At first Elena and Stefan think Damon is responsible for the attacks and other strange occurences, but mounting evidence leads them to believe otherwise…
The love-story is simply painful to behold, and I’m not sure what’s worse: the love-lorn wide-eyed declarations of love between Stefan and Elena (“you’ve stolen my soul”) or Damon’s painful attempts at seducing her (“You can become a queen of shadows”). Smith is usually quite good at capturing every-day speech, but the dialogue of this book is abysmal.
But in the face of the awful love-story, there are other little plot strands to consider that keep “Vampire Diaries” from being a complete waste of time. Even though “The Struggle” isn’t that important in the context of the entire series, the more mundane occurances hold one’s interest. In the previous book, Elena’s diary is stolen, which contained several crucial passages about Stefan’s involvement in the attacks at Fell’s Church. Now little notes are popping up, posting on notice boards, slipped into her bag, that quote Elena’s own words back at her. Elena and her two closet friends Bonnie and Meredith suspect their ex-friend Caroline, and dread the fact that she’s planning on reading out the diary at the Founding Day celebration.
In between hatching a plan to steal back the diary, there is a whole range of other problems that need to be dealt with: the previously attacked Vickie is now acting very strangely at school, a new teacher Alaric Saltzman is asking a lot of suspicious questions, Bonnie’s prophesies continue to get more and more ominous and class bully Tyler Smallwood is also causing trouble amongst the students. To top it all off, Damon is prowling around, inviting himself to class functions and even Elena’s house in the attempts to stir up trouble between the brothers.
It ends, of course, on a big cliffhanger, and I think it’s fair to say that on the whole “The Vampire Diaries” are not L. J. Smith’s best work (not that any of her work is high literature). For me personally, I like my vampires evil and dark – but Smith’s vampires are technically the good guys, and have no sense of the massive weight of vampiric lore that surrounds the legend; instead they act too much like teenagers. Though the books are backed up by reasonably interesting sub-plots, and one can clearly see from the other reviews that pre-teens swoon over the books and characters, it’s only a matter of time before they’re looking back and wondering “what was I *thinking*?!” They’re good books to take on holiday – quick, easy, entertaining reads that don’t need too much brain-power to read, and are no big loss if they are misplaced.
Rating: 2 / 5
I loved the first book..but i loved this one even more. The Vampire Diaries has heat that Twilight can only dream of. I can’t wait to read the next one in the series
Rating: 5 / 5
I received this book in excellent condition nothing wrong with it at all. I even received it before I expected it as well.
Rating: 5 / 5
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