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"Vampire Diaries" are the earlier books written by L.J. Smith and, unfortunately, it shows. I enjoyed her later trilogies "Dark Visions" and "The Forbidden Games" very much and therefore had very high hopes for "Vampire Diaries."

To my disappointment, the writing is just not as good as I came to expect from L.J. Smith. The characters are not fully developed and more often than not unlikeable. The romance also is not written very well. It is very hard to believe in passion between Elena and Stefan. The narration in "The Awakening" is too choppy; multiple POVs are sometimes confusing and distracting. "The Struggle" however is significantly better written, the ending really pulled off the entire second book for me.

In spite of all this criticism, however, I have to give credit L.J. Smith for creating characters and mythology that were later shamelessly "borrowed" by Stephenie Meyer. The similarities between "Vampire Diaries" and "Twilight" are undeniable. Human-vampire romance set in high school, blood lust, angst, "vegetarian" vampires - all was first written by L.J. Smith.

I will continue on reading this series and hope the books are going to get better.