The Vampire Diaries~The Return:Nightfall

First off, whoever edited this book.....shame on you.
Was it an intern? Potentially.
I'm talking simple grammatical errors that were not fixed.
Can you find such errors in my blog on occasion? Certainly. But I'm not a New York Times Bestselling Author.
It took 250 pages, but finally LJ Smith started writing like LJ Smith again and I was up until 2 or 3 in the morning, until it started getting silly again.
It's difficult to review this one without giving away story details....
Let's just say it felt like a horribly contrived effort.
There seem to be remnants of other stories Smith has written (The Forbidden Game) tangled up in this and you, know...while I love supernatural thrillers....it can only be so supernatural before it gets ridiculous. This book got ridiculous time and again.
After the two hundred pages of brilliance winked out I started wondering if HarperCollins was going to start up a card game, like Chaotic or Bakugan. "And I meet your Power Flash 3500 with THE WINGS OF REDEMPTION!"
And then it got all Peter Pan, "Just think happy thoughts and they'll lift you off the ground!"
And then it was back and forth and back and forth and let's make this happen to cover over what I had to do back on page 375.
I got tired of it.
My other BIGGEST qualm was all the mindspeak. That wasn't a major component of the original story and it nearly ruined this one.
Fortunately LJ Smith's characters are so strong they could withstand this onslaught of underachievement. It pains me to write about an LJ Smith novel like this, but it's the truth.
I like to think that they twisted her arm into this and demanded that she meet an impossible deadline, because, more than anything, that's what I get from this novel...with the exception of those 200 pages of brilliance. If I can write as she did for those 200 pages, I will be happy indeed.
Now, on to the next one...Shadow Souls, I guess. May it be infinitely better than the last. (I am grateful that The Vampire Diaries~The Return: Midnight doesn't come out until July 1, 2010. It will be nice to spend time meeting some new characters.)