The Vampire Diaries Books 1 - 3
Lol this book cover WHAT A MISDIRECTION. Book!Elena is actually.... blonde. :O
I moved pretty quickly through the first three books after I got into it (and things pick up about halfway through The Awakening) and I will reluctantly withdraw my conclusion that it is the WORST BOOK EVER and instead say they’re not too awful for young adult fiction written 20 years ago. Elena, in particular, gets pretty awesome and self-assured as the books go on and has ~character development~ where she changes over the course of the books from the Ice Princess Snow Queen of high school to being willing to sacrifice herself for the town.
Some thoughts:
-With the exception of Elena, everyone’s TV selves are so much more awesome than their book selves, I can’t even. ESPECIALLY STEFAN. Omg, book!Stefan, look at your choices. Look at your life. One of the interesting things about book!Elena is how she accepts becoming a social pariah at school because she Stands By Her Man. BUT WHAT DOES SHE EVEN SEE IN BOOK!STEFAN?? IT IS A MYSTERY. Basically their relationship goes like this:
Stefan ignores her for 75 percent of the first book because Elena looks like Katherine. Then he rescues her from being sexually assaulted by Tyler (SO MANY WAYS I JUDGED THAT PASSAGE NGL) and Elena confronts him because WHY DID HE RESCUE HER WHEN HE SO CLEARLY HATES HER and Stefan is like NO I WAS MEAN TO YOU BECAUSE I LOVE YOU. Anyway they hook up but Elena is still like “Why is he so distant and mysterious and won’t even hug me?? IT’S LIKE HE HAS SOME MYSTERIOUS SECRET D:.” Eventually she learns he’s a vampire and they start sharing blood which I guess is a metaphor for sex. The vampire reveal is pretty weird-Elena falls off a roof or something, and then five seconds later offers up her blood to him. OKAY FINE.
Stefan spends the next couple of books generally being standoffish and emotionally distant and getting into danger and needing to be rescued by Elena ALL THE TIME. SERIOUSLY, ALL THE TIME. Like on the one hand I enjoy the reversal of gender roles?? But on the other hand, JESUS STEFAN YOU ARE A FUCKING VAMPIRE, GROW A SPINE GOD. TV!Stefan would chain up book!Stefan in the basement and torture him with vervain.
Also every time the books switched to Stefan’s internal monologue, it was like NO PLEASE NO ANYTHING BUT THAT. It was basically a stream of: “I am so evil, I don’t deserve to live among humans, if Elena dies I will walk out into the sun and join her.” etc. etc. We get it, Stefan, you are a vampire and Elena is the only light in your life. Whatever.
She clenched her fists. "Where's Stefan?"
A line between appeared between Damon's dark eyebrows. "Stefan who?"
Elena stepped forward and slapped him.
My note for this passage is "lol yes get it girl" but I also think "UGH STEFAN STOP GETTING KIDNAPPED/INTO DANGER/HELD HOSTAGE" is appropriate.
And maybe Stefan should just do what he'd planned to do after killing Damon. Wait until dawn and take off the silver ring that protected him from sunlight. Stand bathing in the fiery embrace of those rays until they burned the flesh from his bones and stopped the pain once and for all. But he knew he wouldn't. As long as Elena walked the earth, he would never leave her. Even if she hated him, even if she hunted him. He would do anything he could to keep her safe.
Book!Stefan is very dramatic.
-Book!Damon is almost as hilarious as book!Stefan. He spends most of book 1 stalking Elena and Stefan in crow form and then after he reveals himself, he makes a lot of speeches about how HE WILL MAKE ELENA HIS DARK PRINCESS OF THE UNDERWOLRD!!! or something. But then in book 2, because Damon doesn’t understand the meaning of “no means no,” he shows up in Elena’s bedroom and threatens to kill her sister unless Elena has sex shares blood with him. So she gives into Damon in a scene that is the creepiest fucking thing ever, what were you even thinking L.J Smith. In the third book when it is revealed that Damon isn’t that evil and it was just Katherine skulking around making him look bad, I was still too busy thinking of him forcing himself on Elena to get onboard with the whole “Damon is a bad boy with a heart of gold” thing. Clearly I have as many conflicted ~feelings~ on book!Damon as I do TV!Damon.
But book!Damon does say some hilarious things:
"Winter is coming, Elena," he said, and his voice was clear and chilling even over the howl of the wind. "An unforgiving season. Before it comes, you'll have learned what I can and can't do. Before winter is here, you'll have joined me. You'll be mine."
-Elena becomes a vampire at the end of book 2 which ngl, I was not expecting at all. There’s something so integral about Elena’s humanness in the TV series that it took me a while to accept it. Like the idea of Elena becoming a vampire is interesting?? But I think only if it was confined to the fic/fandom world. IDK, I’m not sure the TV series would be the same for me without Elena’s human humanness at the centre of it.
-Also a big difference from the TV series: Elena and Katherine aren’t doppelgangers, they just look alike. Which lol, okay.
-Actually book!Katherine is the biggest disappointment EVEN MORE THAN STEFAN. She comes across as really passive and weepy and KATHERINE IS NOT PASSIVE AND WEEPY, UGH L.J.SMITH.
-In a really hilarious flashback scene, Katherine fakes a suicide and Damon and Stefan fight each other to the death in a sword fight. I AM NOT EVEN KIDDING. Stefan gets stabbed first and as he goes down, manages to stab Damon in return. Omg, it was great.
-Like in the TV series, Elena acts as a catalyst in bringing Stefan and Damon together again. At the end of the third book, she sacrifices herself to kill Katherine and then dies in Stefan’s arms while Stefan weeps into her hair and Damon... awkwardly stands there watching this all go down. So Elena tells Stefan she loves him and makes him promise that he’ll look after Damon and then she dies. Stefan plans to go sparkle to death but then Damon is like REMEMBER YOUR PROMISE!!!
She'd left him here alone. Not for long, he thought. His ring was on the floor. He didn't even glance at it as he rose, his eyes on the shaft of sunlight shining down.
A hand grabbed his arm and pulled him back. Stefan looked into his brother's face. Damon's eyes were dark as midnight, and he was holding Stefan's ring. As Stefan watched, unable to move, he forced the ring onto Stefan's finger and released him.
Aw.
-I ended the book feeling all sad and weepy because ELENA DDD:.
There is a fourth book in which (I think) Elena comes back or is resurrected or something but there’s no Kindle version available yet. I did track down a PDF of it though so I will read that and let you all know.