*3.2 stars.

Grade: C-

This was a lot!!! I just kept saying omg my favorite characters are back! Lol I watched tvd first so when Stefan got locked in the crept I knew he would get out. I didn’t expect Lexi to show up at all that was a surprise! Now I just want to know what happens next…

Loved the action, love Damon

Right so I love L.J. Smith when she's at the top of her game, really I do. I've read most of her books (I think I missed one or two but I'd have to check - all of the big ones and even some not as well known, I've read). So I'm having a really hard time here. I was in the middle of the last book she'd written (The Vampire Diaries: The Return: Midnight) and just couldn't get through it. I was really feeling like the Vampire Diaries as a book series was dead for me. I'd stopped, read other books, gone back to it, stopped again. Then I get the e-mail from Amazon reminding me hey this is on your Kindle. Okay maybe this is what I need - those last two Stefan's diary books were pretty good.

Yes! The vamps are *cough* alive and well. And this is why I have such a problem with it. It's clearly not L.J. Smith. Her name does appear on the books - along with two others. I'm unclear on how much input she had in this arc of the series but given that she has now been fired from the books and how totally different the style is from her recent Vampire Diaries books I can only assume not very much. If I am wrong, I apologize but sadly this version is 100% better than the last arc she wrote alone which I seemed to be buying solely on some sort fan devotion and not because I felt they were good. This though is truly good.

The Salvatore brothers both end up in New York. Coincidence? Or is one maybe planning on toying with the other? Stalking the other? They do both end up connected to a high society family - surely that is a coincidence? And as always they end up wondering if they are really each others biggest problems or if they need to play nice with each other -- if there are things out there so much bigger and badder they are, so maybe they at least need to pretend to be friends again if only long enough to figure out what in the heck is happening around them.

So long as these books keep going this route, I'm in - whoever has taken over has figured out what was missing. Hopefully now that L.J. Smith is free of them she can find whatever it is she was missing in her future books, which I am also in for.

Good add on to the CW series.

Okay, I am going to start off with saying I was bored. Oh My God bored. It's a book with just over 200 pages. It should have been a breeze for me to read in 24 hrs right? Wrong. Oh so very wrong. I feel that a lot of this book there was whining and I just kept thinking "Geez Stefan would you like some cheese with that whine?" I do not like when main characters whine for the entirety of a book. It just gets so boring and I loose interest pretty quickly.

I have to say that it is pretty much the same old same old. Some of the things happening in the book you could figure out a mile away there was no surprise to this book. Damon beat him to New York, no surprise there. Damon has compelled half of New York into thinking he is some Count. Not a surprise there either since Damon has vowed to make Stefan's life a living hell for all of eternity.

Enter the poor rich family that Damon has compelled to take Stefan in with no questions asked when he has rescued their youngest daughter. Damon has a plan to take all of their money in a dowry to marry one of the daughters. In this quest for money he tells Stefan that he has to be part of this plan or he will slaughter the lot of them. For Damon this is not something that many of us who have watched the show or read the books really written by L. J. Smith are surprised about.

So Stefan just goes along with this plan that Damon has to keep the family safe. Well the family does not stay safe after the wedding. Stefan and Damon are wanted criminals now for the murder of their wives and their in-laws.

I just could not stand this book written by these other people. The writing style was horrendous and I could not stand the he said he said he said. There were not a lot of other words they used to describe things happening in the book and you can only use so many words so many times. I have seen a few people who love these books but I am having a hard time loving these books.