Dear L. J. Smith,

The Vampire Diaries 1-5:  The Awakening, The Struggle, The Fury, Dark Reunion and The Return:  Nightfall – L.J. Smith

Elena is the undisputed Queen of the School, and can always get any guy she wants–except the mysterious and handsome new boy, Stefan Salvatore.  She vows to get him even if it kills them both, but she doesn’t know how very likely that is until Stefan’s troublemaking brother Damon shows up, and life-or-death-or-undeath mayhem ensues.  With everything from the familiar vampire lore to Druidic magic and Japanese fox demons, this as-yet-unfinished series follows the exploits of Elena, Stefan, their friends, and all the baddies that haunt the little town of Fell’s Church.

The Vampire Diaries started out with the same old first day of school setting, which I was mentally bemoaning as another Twilight copy until I realized it was published more than ten years prior to the Cullen Craze.  Which then led me to wonder if Stephanie Meyer read your first Vampire Diaries book, then went to sleep and had a dream that inspired her to write a book…..  You know the story, I’m sure.  At any rate, as I started reading, I found the prose slightly less lacking than Stephanie’s, but still in need of a firmer editorial hand.  Still, the twists and turns of the story were enough to make me continue, partially because I was traveling and had brought no other books with me.  I will admit that I was intrigued enough to soldier through, and somehow found myself at the end of five books that just kept getting more and more…complicated, to put it delicately.  I was with you for a while, with Stefan’s tragic past and Damon’s very very hidden secret good heart, and Elena and Stefan’s everlasting love.  It was when you started going a little bit ’round the bend that I began to lose faith.  You just kept throwing things at me–human death, transition to vampirism, vampire death, returning from death as a glowing, flying, unbearably pure angel-spirit-child-thing, magic invisible wings of redemption and healing, and Japanese kitsune that stuck out like sore thumbs in an established world of European vampire and magic lore.

I mean, okay.  I love Buffy, and Joss threw many of those things at me, too.  But the difference was that I cared about Buffy, and all the characters surrounding her.  I never particularly cared about anyone in the Vampire Diaries–Elena’s the sort of stuck-up bitchy popular girl I always hated in school, and all her friends revolve around her like she’s the sun in the sky.  Stefan is a bit like brooding Angel at his most irritating, and Damon is evil but lacks Spike’s rakish charm, let alone his depth.  So I hope it’s believable when I say that it’s not the fact that all those things happened that turned me off, but the way they happened, and the people they happened to.  I get that you’re trying to create a world in where magic and beasties and such exist, and you’re going gung-ho for the drama, and I even get that you’re trying to branch out into the mythology of other cultures by bringing in the kitsune in the most recent book.  Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work.  The execution just isn’t there to support the huge leaps of fancy that really require the reader to be sticking right with you the whole time.  I think if more of the word count was spent making the characters into fully-realized, somewhat likeable people, it would be easier to swallow the crazy plot turns.

Let me say, though, that I think this sort of thing has its place in the world of books.  There are plenty of other books I read that I could objectively review just as harshly, but that I adore with unwarranted and enduring fervor.  The Vampire Diaries didn’t do it for me the way Twilight did, or even the way Mercedes Lackey or Caroline Cooney or even Joanna Campbell did when I was younger.  But that’s just me–it doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there for whom The Vampire Diaries are just the right kind of junk food, and I wouldn’t begrudge them that pleasure.  Still, from my perspective, you get a 3.

Respectfully,

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Dear Audrey Niffenegger,

The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

Henry, a charming and troubled librarian, time-travels involuntarily during times of stress; Clare, a chronologically normal artist, has loved him since he appeared naked out of thin air in a meadow near her childhood home.  Each time Henry disappears, she can only wait and hope that he’ll return to her safe and whole.

I was told a hundred times that I would love The Time Traveler’s Wife, so I finally broke down and read it.  What a tapestry your novel is!  It’s complex, but never so much that I can’t follow; sexy, in an honest and eager way that makes it even hotter; so beautifully written that I want to have a copy sitting around, and read bits aloud to myself while curled up in bed on a rainy day.  It also sent me into fits of very exquisite agony and set me crying on the Bolt Bus.  I fell wildly in love with both Henry and Clare, and the ending was incredibly poignant.  I’m held back from letting myself embrace the book entirely, though, because of one problem.  There’s a moment of foreshadowing, somewhere in the middle of the novel, that was just a little too clear–I found myself thinking, if that actually plays out, it would be one step too far.  Near the end of the book, you went there, and I did think it was too far.  A little bit too much angst and terrible circumstance, in a book (and a life) already rife with both, dampened my enjoyment and also lessened my emotional connection to the book’s final outcome.  I can’t give such a great book less than five stars, but I really wish Henry could have run on strong until the end.  Oh, and btw–I’m WICKED excited to see the movie, which appears to be slated for later this summer.  Such an extremely cinematic book lends itself naturally to film, I think, though I disagree with some of the casting choices (Henry looks much too buff, IMHO).

Love,

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Dear Nancy Verde Barr,

This is another wavering-between-three-stars-and-four book. It got better as the plot progressed, but it was definitely one of those cookie-cutter romances about a recently dumped woman who meets a flirtatious and devilishly handsome man who she resists for a while out of principle but eventually can’t resist. Except this one was interspersed with really detailed cooking scenes, because it was written by a chef. I did enjoy the tour through Italy, though I thought the main character (half Ita…more Last Bite: A Novel of Culinary Romance is another wavering-between-three-stars-and-four book.  I’m coming down on the side of three stars.  It got better as the plot progressed, but it was definitely one of those cookie-cutter romances about a recently dumped woman who meets a flirtatious and devilishly handsome man who she resists for a while out of principle but eventually submits to.  Except this one was interspersed with really detailed cooking scenes, because you’re a tv prep chef.  I did enjoy the tour through Italy, though I thought the main character could have spent less time thinking about how much she loved the Italians, “her people.”  I think a lot of the probably enjoyable factors of this book were lost on me; pretty stereotypical hetero wooing, including a day of allusions to Roman Holiday (which I’ve never had any particular desire to see) doesn’t quite have the same appeal to a non-chef “finnochia” (apparently lesbians are called “fennel” in the Mother Country).  The side plot with the Russian Mafia was more interesting, and I did get a kick out of the main character’s Italian family.  All in all, this was a nice light read, but not something I’d pick up again.

Love,

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