Rarely do I recommend a television or movie adaption of a book over the book itself. The Vampire Diaries, however, leaves me no choice but to do just that. I usually don’t throw around the word hate when it comes to books. It takes a lot to make me reach that point but I loathed the first four books in The Vampire Diaries series. The series was written by L.J. Smith in 1991. It revolves around Elena Gilbert, the most stereotypical popular girl in history, and two vampire brothers, Damon and Stefan Salvatore. I’m not going to review each individual book because to be honest they start to run together but in order the books are: The Awakening, The Struggle, The Fury and Dark Reunion. The middle two books accurately describe what it was like trying to make it through these books haha. I have two main reasons for not liking these books, which I will break down, but I really like the television adaption. If you read the books and hate them like I did do not let that discourage you from trying out the show. The two barely resemble each other! I would say the only things that are the same about the book and show is character names, some settings and very few events. Meaning two or three things that happen in the book also happen in the show but even then the details are usually different. And I mean Ian Somerhalder as Damon Salvatore, need I say more?

Picture from Pinterest.

As far as characters go the only one that was truly unlikable for me was Elena Gilbert. Funnily enough, I didn’t like her in the TV show either for pretty much the same reasons. She is too perfect, too beautiful, too popular, just too wonderful in general. She has no depth and is amazingly boring. She’s also the typical snobby girl who thinks she’s better than everyone and even says so multiple times yet somehow everybody in the town still loves her and thinks she’s just the greatest. I know many fans love her character in the book and show and that’s fine. Everyone is allowed to have an opinion and this is just mine, along with everything else in this review.

Next up it was just boring. I was bored from beginning to end. Maybe if I was a teenager back in 1991 I would’ve loved these and thought they were exciting, but being a twenty-four year old in 2016 that is used to the show the books just didn’t do it for me. I don’t know, maybe if I had read the books first my opinion would be different but I really doubt it.

I think that pretty much covers everything. To summarize: Elena Gilbert is awful, I was bored to tears and watch the TV show, skip the books. As previously stated all of this is just my opinion. If you love the books that’s great! I’m glad you enjoy them. If you hate the show that’s great too. I know I didn’t go into too much detail with this because I like to avoid spoilers but I hope it was helpful regardless. Thanks for reading and have a great day!