"The Vampire Diaries" by L. J. Smith

Three Stars

Another TV show that I (am a little embarrassed to admit) enjoy.

Elena Gilbert, her aunt, and younger sister have all just returned from a summer in Paris after the tragic death of her parents. On the first day of school she sees the new student, handsome and mysterious Stefan Salvatore, and decides that she will have him.

Elena is the perfect high school girl, pretty, popular, cheerleader, so she cannot understand why Stefan insists on ignoring and avoiding her at every opportunity. None of her usual plans work until she throws herself into serious danger during Prom and Stefan is the one who saves her. After that they become inseparable and Elena learns Stefan’s secret – he’s a vampire.

But this is only part of Stefan’s story. Elena becomes more frightened of, yet drawn to Stefan other secrets are revealed. Including the fact that Elena is an exact copy of Stefan’s first love Katherine, who died tragically and also happened to be the vampire that changed him. There’s also the problem of his brother Damon. Stefan and Damon were both in love with Katherine. She changed them both into vampires, and after her death they tried to kill each other then never spoke again. Problem is, Damon has decided that Elena is good enough of a reason for a family reunion.

This book was fun. It is a lot different from the TV show and I think the show is better. Truthfully, if I didn’t like the show I probably would not have liked the book very much. Elena is really a brat and not very likable at times, but it works because that’s how the author presents her and who she’s supposed to be.

This book is really just a set up for the series so I don’t know how closely or completely differently the show’s storyline is from the other books. The show is kind of stupid but fun at the same time, so that’s all I’m hoping for from this series

"The Apothecaries Daughter" by Julie Klassen

One Star

Lily Haswell and her younger brother, Charlie, have been raised by their father, the local apothecary, ever since her mother left them three years before. Women are not allowed to be apothecaries, yet Lily learns everything about the trade by helping her father run the store after her mother’s abandonment.

Everything in Lily’s life changes when her rich aunt and uncle arrive from London hoping to take Charlie back with them since they have no children. However, Charlie, who suffered brain damage during birth, is not what they had hoped so they ask Lily to come instead. Lily, who had always dreamed of travel and adventure, leaves her family and spends the next two years in London, enjoying the season and looking for a husband.

When an urgent message is received from Lily’s old friend, begging her to return and help her family, Lily reluctantly leaves London mid-season only to find herself surrounded by three eligible suitors in her home town. She must decide between which man she loves and which life she wishes to lead, all while working to heal her father and save the family business.

I didn’t really like this book. I downloaded it to my Kindle because it was free and am quite happy that I did not pay for it. It wasn’t horrible, but I just didn’t really like it. It’s almost two completely separate stories, her life at home and her life in London, that I felt the author tried too hard to combine for conflict at the end.

And Lily is really kind of a brat when she returns. She acts like she knows everything and is better than her old friends and, this really bugged me, she took her brother, who is mentally disabled, away from a job that he found, loved, and thrived at, so that he could come home and work in her family’s garden. I think she did it because the job was at the big manor house outside of town and she felt it was demeaning to her family to have her brother be a servant.

And all the while there is a little too much information about the apothecaries vs. doctor controversy of that time.

It was all just a little to formulaic and predictable to me.