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Book Review of Nightfall (Vampire Diaries: The Return, Bk 1)

Nightfall (Vampire Diaries: The Return, Bk 1)
JonnieAngel avatar reviewed on + 44 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2


This book is horrible. I had to force myself to finish it.

At first, I thought it might have been fan fiction, written by an imposter. The continuity of the story bothered me to the point of distraction. The first four books had no mention of cell phones or computers and the internet because it wasn't a technology that was widely available in the nineties. Nightfall picks up a few days after the last book ended. But in reality, it's been about a decade. Overnight all of the characters have cell phones and are surfing the internet. And the diary in question? It is now a Word document.

The story is written in such painstaking detail, that I wonder if L.J. Smith was paid per word. There were details that could have been left out and the story should have been shorter. Nightfall is twice as long as all of the other books and if one were to count all of the words, I wouldn't be surprised to find if most of the book's bulk was nothing more than adjectives.

Nightfall has sort of "The Host" feel to it, complete with soul stealing parasites that make a "whip whip whip" sound like a helicopter. It's all about angelic Elena's transformation into a human again and the evil kitsune twins that feed off of emotion. But the twins come across as anime villains, with mystical powers and magical objects. There are no real vampire adventures and the moments that we do have with Damon and Elena or Elena and Stefan are so disjointed, it is hard to follow along.

Nightfall also has a strange sexual overtone to it that was absent in the previous books. Elena awakens as an innocent soul, who kisses people to greet them. Only, it is in a nonsexual way, except Elena is uncomfortable with Stefan seeing her kiss Matt...which means it's not purely innocent. But, I digress. The parasites make people do things they wouldn't normally do and at times it made for an uncomfortable reading.

I might still pay the $20.00 to download the next book on iTunes, but I am hesitant. Maybe I'll read the reviews first and then decide. This purchase stung a bit.