A Spoiler Free Bit About The Book
Elena is a high school student who's used to getting everything she wants. So when new boy Stefan ignores her she has to find out why.
The truth is more dangerous than she could've imagined.
My Review
I'm surprised I could make it sound good in my own words considering I loathed this book. Every word was torture. But I suppose I didn't have high expectations.
Let's start off with the good things. I enjoyed the first line.
"Something awful is going to happen today. I don't know why I wrote that."
Now onto everything else because after that there was nothing else I enjoyed, apart from giving a running commentary to my boyfriend about how terrible I was finding it.
Firstly, and most importantly, I hated Elena. She's selfish, self-centred, vain, and the queen of the school. For some reason everyone likes her and she can command them at will. I understand this is set in high school but come on. She could be all those things - but she would not be liked. Or, she can be liked, but not a total bitch, she can't have it all. There were some very specific lines where I hated her guts. E.g. page 3;
"Elena Gilbert, cool and blonde and slender, the fashion trendsetter, the high school senior, the girl every boy wanted and every girl wanted to be."
I mean, how can you not hate her? I thought perhaps this was done on purpose and she was going to change by the end of the book and see the error of her ways. Alas, not. I question how a person could even get to this point. She has not one single redeeming feature. She is filled with flaws and annoying traits. How did Smith not want to murder her over and over again? I did.
Also, this really made me angry, she treats the entire male population like they belong to her, like they're objects for her owning and are at her every command. It was incredibly sexist and unfair to men. I know this is a book for women/girls but come on! I was disgusted and highly offended by this. Here's an example from page 14/15;
"Most boys, Elena reflected, were like puppies. Adorable in their place but expendable."
In what way is it okay to describe all men as "Adorable in their PLACE but EXPENDABLE."? In their place? How insulting.
I rolled my eyes when Elena was homecoming queen because of course she was, though the actual dance was the most boring one I've ever read. Nothing happened. The entire scene could've been cut out, the important stuff happened later. Obviously Smith was struggling to pad out her already short book. The dance also allowed for another vanity moment where Elena goes on about how beautiful she is - translated, another moment I despised her.
"In that instant, Elena was aware that she was beautiful"
She goes on but I don't think I have to add more than that.
Okay, now I'm going to rip apart her relationship with Stefan. I'll admit, when the book was following Stefan, as it did every now and again, I found it much easier to swallow. It still wasn't good, but it was bearable. Though his part in the story was so predictable I could cry. This isn't a spoiler as the series is called The Vampire Diaries, but Stefan is a vampire, wow, shocker. The reader knows this, that's fine. It works that way - I say works in the widest possible sense of the word. But Elena doesn't know. Well she certainly doesn't at the beginning because it starts just before they meet. How then, half way through, without any internal struggle on her part, does she know? It gets about half the way through and I got the impression that without him giving it away and without him telling her she knew. She does get told near the end but she acts like she's always known. It's stupid. That was going to be the one good part of this book and Elena ruined it by not reacting in any way whatsoever!
Their love was utterly ridiculous. I thought they were gong to fall in love quickly, that much was obvious. But I was not prepared for the way it actually happened. They can't have had more than three conversations and all of a sudden he's madly in love with her. They weren't even good conversations! By the end of the book they didn't even know each other, let alone when they started throwing I love you around like hello, how are you? Also, she'a an utter brat to him - to everyone in fact. He's hundreds of years old, why would he stand for that? If I was a vampire, I would've ripped her throat out, just saying.
Moving on to the plot and the way this was written. It was technically fine. There was too much pointless description for my liking but I could deal with that. It almost felt like Smith had this idea but then when she put the characters in it all went to hell. The characters made the whole thing so melodramatic and exhausting. Also, because of their inane teenage chatter, I got 50 pages in - which is a quarter by the way - and realised that nothing at all had happened yet.
It continued on like this for the whole book. The pace was so bizarre. Either nothing at all was happening or everything was happening but it was over in a second. This was probably due to the incredibly feeble plot line. Nothing exciting happened. It was practically devoid of exciting incidents entirely.
I must just add what I think about the claim that Stephenie Meyer took this idea and wrote Twilight off the back of it. Having read both Twilight and The Awakening, it's safe to say that they are not the same thing. Let's be honest, all vampire-romance fiction is the same. Claiming Meyer stole this idea is ridiculous. There were a few similar bits but the major plot wasn't the same - and may I say Meyer did it much better. I do think that Meyer has probably read this book because a few bits rang a bell but it's certainly not similar enough to claim that she copied it.
To finish off, my book reviews usually consist of an A5 page of notes. I felt so strongly about how awful this book is that I used two.
Utter trash.
Evaluation
Overall 1/10 - yep, you read correctly, a 1
Would I recommend it? No. This book, like it's protagonist, had no redeeming features.
Would I look up the author? No. Not on your life.
The Awakening made me want to bring its protagonist to life so I could beat her to death and be done with it. It was the most awful thing I've read all year.
Molly Looby
Author / Ghostwriter / Editor / Blogger / Reviewer / Wrimo / Movellian / ZA Ready
molly.looby@hotmail.com
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