I Swear I Will Finish This Even If It Kills Me And Brings About The Ending Of The Known Universe
Apparently, Tuesday is officially the most depressing day of the week. It’s too far from last weekend for us to still be happily reminiscing about the fun we had. It’s too far from next weekend for us to start getting excited about it. And there’s still more of the working week left to go than we’ve already got through. Also, if you’re the type who prefers the weekend to pass in a haze of Ecstasy, Tuesday is the day when you can expect the consequent endorphin deficit to really kick in and make you wish you’d never been born.
But hey, it’s not all bad, because we’ve got Chapter Eight of The Vampire Diaries to look forward to! And – after the disgraceful rape-apologist antics of last time – things are actually starting to look up. Maybe I might get to like Stefan and Elena after all!
Okay, I’m making that up. This book is still terrible. But Chapter Eight does have the odd moment which gives me hope. [Note from the future: why do I do this to myself, damn it?]
Elena’s in Stefan’s bathroom, mopping herself up and feeling angry. No, not with Tyler, the man who tried to rape her, because that would, you know, make sense and everything. She’s angry with Stefan, because he saved her from Tyler and didn’t curse anyone out while he did so and still has a wall around him, which is now apparently about the size and shape of the Great Wall of China.
Incidentally, Stefan’s Wall is rapidly becoming more annoying than Bella’s gigantic chest-hole.

If you're looking for a fun way to spend your evening, try googling "chest-hole" without the filters on.
Elena then decides she’s going to be annoying. To achieve this, she goes through some of Stefan’s stuff which he left lying around on his sideboard, and which consists of a dagger, an agate cup, a device which she describes as “a golden sphere with some sort of dial set into it” (over here we like to call that a Watch, but maybe it’s a Stateside thang) and some gold Florentines. I quite like this, because it’s an undeniable truth that when men get home, they all immediately turn out the contents of their pocket onto the nearest flat surface, then wander off again.
Also, it suggests that Stefan is still pointlessly carrying around the coinage of his youth, in the hopeless belief that somewhere, somehow, they will once again become negotiable currency. Bless.
By the way, wouldn’t it utterly suck to be perpetually eighteen? I don’t know about you, but when I was eighteen, I was an idiot. For me, those first few heady years of adulthood were just one long, glorious train-wreck of crappy relationship choices, excruciating moments of social ineptness and poor wardrobe decisions. Admittedly my body was in better shape, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make on the altar of experience.

For example, imagine never accumulating the life-experiences that allow you to see this and cry with laughter.
Anyway, onwards. To make up for the contents-of-a-perpetually-teenaged-Vampire’s-pockets moment of brilliance, we get a stupid conversation between Stefan and Elena. Demonstrating that even girls who remind relatives’ boyfriends of Helen of Troy are capable of having no insight at all into human psychology, Elena makes a big list of all the things she doesn’t like about Stefan, and splurges it out in one gigantic rant.
Things Elena Doesn’t Like About Stefan
1. He saved her without asking her permission first
2. He was in the graveyard without having an adequate explanation
3. He acts as if Elena is some kind of leper
4. She tried to be friendly to him (is that what we’re calling it these days? That strange I-shall-not-rest-until-he-is-mine performance in the graveyard?) and he threw it back in her face
5. He’s snubbed her in public “time after time” (incidental note to any young people reading: do not do this if you want the person in question to be speaking to you afterwards. Nothing annoys people more than being told they’ve done something bad repeatedly)
6. He’s humiliated her at school (I sort of love the implication that humiliating her in other places would have been better in some way)
7. He is only speaking to her because he just saved her life
8. He doesn’t want to be anywhere near her
9. He’s built a wall (again with the walls!)
10. He doesn’t trust anyone
11. He has had the barefaced bloody cheek to apparently fancy Caroline Forbes instead
Considering what just happened, this seems a little harsh.
A good conversation to have at this point
Elena: Thanks for saving me. That was very kind of you. Could you please call the police?
Stefan: I already have, and will be more than happy to be a witness.
In real life, this extensive listing of Stefan’s faults would pretty much guarantee they will never have a relationship. In Vampire World, this leads to Stefan kissing her, and the wall come tumbling down.
And you know what? We now actually get some plot. Hooray! Unlike “Twilight”, where everything happens in the last fifty pages or so, in this book we’re actually seeing some stuff happening that isn’t just two drippy virgins flouncing around in a meadow and counting each other’s eyelashes. Meredith, Bonnie and Matt’s grudging rescue mission may not have got there in time to drag Tyler off Elena, but they do get to rescue someone called Vicky Bennett, who (in true Hollywood tradition) is glassy-eyed, dirty-faced, inarticulate and in her underwear. Apparently she was attacked by something with eyes while she was making out with Dick, and it was all around them and had eyes, and they couldn’t run, and it had eyes, and it was the same thing that got the tramp under the bridge, and it had eyes.
In a rare but welcome moment of sensible thinking, Meredith insists they take Vicky to a doctor, and since she’s the Vampire-book equivalent of the red-shirt Security Officer on “Star Trek”, that’s probably the last we’ll be seeing of Vicky Bennett.
Back in Casa Salvatore, Elena and Stefan are kissing, and I am getting angry again. Here’s a sample from this page-long unrealistic-expectations-fest:
She felt the tender pressure of his lips on hers, and she could hardly bear the sweetness of it. Yes, she thought. Sensation rippled through her like waves on a clear, still pond. She was drowning in it, both the joy she sensed in Stefan and the delicious answering surge in herself.
See, I can still remember my first kiss. It was very nice, and the boy I was kissing was likewise very nice, and I still have a sneaking fondness for the particular cheap aftershave he was wearing at the time. However – and I don’t think we were alone in this – neither of us actually had an orgasm, which is clearly what’s being described here.
And okay, most descriptions of sex and sexual relationships in novels are pretty unrealistic; but isn’t this taking it a little too far? Is it fair to teach impressionable teenage girls that if a boy doesn’t actually get them off with the mere touch of his lips on hers, he’s clearly not the one for them?
Or maybe that long-ago boy and I were just doing it all wrong.

I was actually looking for a some suggestively-shaped lemons, but when I googled "Rude Lemons" and this young lady popped up, I decided she was much better.
But, since it’s nice to end on a positive, I am going to say again that at least this book has a proper plot. When Stefan and Elena wander back in a dreamy, post-coital fashion to Elena’s place, they find everyone else waiting for them, eager to discuss the freaky shit that went down in the graveyard earlier. Admittedly, everyone’s suffering from that strange blindness to the existence of Vampires that exists in all modern Vampire novels; but that’s okay, they’ll get there in the end.
Who could it be? Who’s behind the mysterious deaths / attacks / tramp-drainings? Stefan clearly knows more than he’s letting on, and I am betting it has something to do with that spooky lecherous crow from the first chapter, and that it’s going to be his brother or something [note from the future; yup], but Elena doesn’t care. Stefan kissed her, and everything’s fine, and they’re going to get married in a pretty white church with Meredith and Bonnie for bridesmaids, and go off to California and farm lemons for all eternity.
Reading this book is bad for my soul. I can feel it. What should I be reading instead? Leave me your recommendations as a comment and I promise I’ll read and review them. It doesn’t have to be YA (although YA is good) – just pick a book whose existence you think I ought to be aware of. Over to you…