BBReview: "The Vampire Diaries 5: The Return: Vol. 1 Nightfall" By L.J. Smith

Genre: Young Adult -Paranormal
Publishing Date: February 10th, 2009
Page Count: 586
Source: Bought from Amazon
Format: E-Book

Description from Amazon:
To save the two vampire brothers who love her, Elena Gilbert sacrificed her life.
Now that a supernatural force has brought Elena back from the dead, all handsome, brooding Stefan wants is to keep her safe. But when he is lured away from Fell's Church, sleek, powerful Damon seizes his chance to win Elena over, unaware of the danger they're both in. A malevolent being has infiltrated the town and is growing stronger. Able to possess Damon at will, the creature is also drawn to Elena and the new power she has acquired. But it's after more than Elena's power: It thirsts for her death.
Elena's story continues in shadow souls!

Review:
While reading this novel i went on goodreads and read some of the other reviewers thoughts and was SHOCKED. A lot of people did not like this novel. On goodreads the rating for this book overall was almost a 4, but still a 3. A lot of people's reasons for not liking this edition to the series is because of the fact that this edition is completely different than the first four that most of them grew up reading and loving. It is much darker than the first four and little off track. It is very heavy and lengthy and also scary in contrast to the 16 chapter long, light, easy to read earlier editions.

I personally liked this edition better than the first three, my favorite still stays as the fourth edition. I think i really started liking this book in the beginning, because with the others i always had to force myself to get through the first four chapters. I dont know why, but i find that in almost every book the first four chapters are alway very slow, only because you have to make them slow in order to slowly have the reader get used to it and learn the plot and characters and understand the novel before throwing them into the good stuff. This novel was not like that at all. It was action packed at the very beginning. I couldnt get through the first four chapters faster than i had, they had me hooked!! Now, there were a couple chapters here and there that were a little slow, but the rest of them made up for it. Another thing that made it a little hard to read was that if you have been reading this series, then you're used to reading 16 chapter long books. This book is 39 chapters, and 14 pages shy of 600, so it is very long and a little hard to get used to.

This fifth edition is also different from the first four, because of its darkess. In this novel L.J. Smith introduces a new paranormal, and a very scary one at that. I can handle vampires, werewolves, zombies, etc. but this one scared the bejesus out of me. If you read or have read this novel you might understand why, it reminds me a little of a certain japanese horror film starring Sarah Michelle Geller, but only a little. Im a scaredy cat so i was scared to go into the dark while reading this lol, but i loved that about it. Also the characters act a little differently, but i think its mainly because they are growing up. L.J. Smith wrote this edition 18 years after the last edition so i just think she grew as an author in that time period.

Another thing those reviewers were saying was that it was confusing and a lot of them just ended up putting down the novel and never finishing it. I think the confusion was necessary, because *SPOILER* there were people being possessed and nobody knew about it at first, especially seeing who the first two peole who were possessed were. Nobody ever knew they were possessed, because they acted like that normally. Of course there is going to be confusion, because the possession causes confusion to the reader, because you're used to that character acting a certain way and now they arent. The other characters were confused the entire time, because they have never dealt with this paranormal and didnt know what to do. They didnt know the signs and didnt know what it was in the first place. Especially when it is stronger than the vampires and they both arent even there to try to help you, yea there is going to be some confusion *END OF SPOILER* So yea, it was necessary. I liked it, bottom line.

Overall:
I think this book was definitely different than the rest, but still amazing. L.J. Smith knows how to write amazing stories and thats a fact, in my book anyways. It is much darker than the earlier books, but if you are old enough to handle that then you're fine. I recommend this to all L.J. Smith's fans and people who love YA, but are looking for a little more of a grown up YA.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 5/5