Review--The Vampire Diaries: The Return: Midnight by L.J. Smith

The devil you know . . .

With the help of charming and devious Damon, Elena rescued her vampire love, Stefan, from the depths of the Dark Dimension. But neither brother returned unscathed. 

Stefan is weak from his long imprisonment and needs more blood than Elena alone can give him, while a strange magic has turned Damon into a human. Savage and desperate, Damon will do anything to become a vampire again, even travel back to hell. But what will happen when he accidentally takes Bonnie with him?

Stefan and Elena hurry to rescue their innocent friend from the Dark Dimension, leaving Matt and Meredith to save their hometown from the dangerous spirits that have taken hold of Fell's Church. One by one, children are succumbing to demonic designs. But Matt and Meredith soon discover that the source of the evil is darker and closer than they ever could have imagined. . . .

I am saddened to see L.J. Smith's series come to an end, at least written by her. To me this is the last The Vampire Diaries. The Return: Midnight was a great finale to what she considered the "Damon" books, in some way. Going back to her world of Fell's Church was rather easy, I expected it to be harder since I've been watching the show, but it wasn't really. Probably because I fell in love with the books first. Although, I did see Ian as Damon, just because Ian really is a great Damon!

Basically the story goes that Damon is human again and wants to go back to being a vampire. He didn't want humanity like Stefan did. So he plans on going back to the Dark Dimensions and finding a powerful vampire to turn him, and Bonnie is taken along for the trip, by accident really.

I always sensed some sort of vibe between these two, nothing like that between Elena and Damon, but still there tended to be something. What bothered me most though was that Elena--and everyone else practically--treats Bonnie like some sort of child. Just because she gets frightened easily. She's not living in a normal world anymore and I think her fear can be warranted, but I got tired of Elena treating her like a child all the time, it was sort of annoying.

What also nagged at me was Elena being in love with two vampires. I guess I just can't see how you can be in love with two people, it was like in Rachel Vincent's Shifter series, Faythe loved two guys, but she couldn't live without the other. Elena never really explored that option.

Despite its thickness, this was rather a quick read. If I had started it at the beginning of the day I could've finished it sooner. As it was I did read through it rather fast. The pacing was really good in my opinion, similar to all L.J.'s pacing. Told in third person p.o.v. from multiple characters, once you get wrapped up in one's side of the story, you're whisked away to another just at a cliffhanger and so on. But when you return you fall easily back into the moment of action.

The ending was rather surprising. I didn't really think it possible, and yet something tickled in my mind that it was possible--weird feeling that I can't really write out well. But yeah, a total shocker! I suppose it is possible for another writer to pick up where L.J. left off if that's the plan, but for me this is the series end because I don't want to read someone else's version of L.J.'s story.

To avoid rambling further, I'll end my review here. Overall rating 4/5 stars and I really only give it 4 because Elena annoyed me a few too many times, but not enough to totally diminish my opinion on the book.