Daily Archives: 14. Januar 2015

Lisa J. Smith: The Struggle

When I read the first book of the Vampire Diaries series, I already decided to continue with the it, simply because I already have the books. Besides that had I chosen it as bonus book (book you haven’t read that was adapted to a movie/TV show) for BiblioSmiles Summer Book Challenge.

What is it about?

2 of 5 stars

The story picks up right where it had left off and Elena, now aware of Stefanos secret, confronts his brother Damon in search for the other. With the help of friends Bonny and Meredith she manages to find him.

With Stefano more or less safely returned to her, they now have to face a different trial: Someone has stolen Elenas diary and the entries seem all but to prove that Stefano is the killer that prowled around their little town.

Will they be able to prove his innocence?

The reading experience

I honestly felt embarrassed while I read and more than once I wondered why I was even reading this book.

The book has somewhat around 200 pages and throughout all of them I was looking for the actual plot. When I was finished I wasn’t even sure what the purpose of the book was. Stuff happened, people talked, but nothing of importance.  What you can read above is pretty much the entire story line of the book.

Other than that was it reading wise not much different then the first part.

The characters

I still don’t like Elena and Stefano and so far I doubt this will change much.

Where I found the sinister side of Damon interesting in the first book, was I disappointed that it wasn’t really featured this time. He was still portrayed as the bad guy, but already showed signs (quite large and blinking) of become just another love-struck vampire. Though he is the creepy type that forcefully takes what he wants, which is also why I don’t understand the growing interest Elena has in him….
Interesting contrast to the main characters? Yes. Healthy people skills? Hell no.

Meredith and Bonny get a bit more screen time and they are a nice – read with more common sense – change from Elena, but it is still too little to get an actual feel of them. Though one of them seems quite dumb, but I don’t remember which one…

All in all do the characters feel kind of dull and sketchy and I didn’t really develop any kind of connection to either of them so far.

General Opinion

So far the story is far too cheesy for my taste and the characters aren’t really memorable. The fluent writing makes up a bit for this, but the missing plot is still kind of weird.
I was shortly considering to rate it even lower, but even with all the complaining above it still doesn’t feel like a one star book…

I’ll still continue, even if it is only to see if there will be plot one day. 😀

Stuff I’d like to add

As I said for part one was this books‘ title also changed during the Twilight hype. Originally it was called: Der Kampf (The Fight/Struggle), but was changed to Bei Dämmerung (At Dawn/Twilight – I’m not entirely sure which one they mean, though I suppose the later) in 2008.
This name-change subsequently causes the connection from title to content to be very, very thin and technically not existent.

PoiSonPaiNter

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