parent nodes: Mercedes Meyers
The Vampire Diaries are a YA horror trilogy by L.J. Smith. The series originally was made up of three books, but a fourth one was written later, continuing the series.
Novels
The Awakening
The Struggle
The Fury
Dark Reunion
Plot summaries
The series tells the story of Elena Gilbert, a student at an American high school in Virginia, back home from a summer in France. On her first day of senior year, she discovers a new student has enrolled: the mysterious Italian, Stefan Salvatore. Elena immediately targets him as her new romantic conquest. However, Stefan completely ignores Elena and instead is forcefully having his attention turned to Elena's rival, Caroline Forbes because the girl is forcing herself and her company on him. Elena goes to her school's Homecoming Dance with Matt Honeycutt, her ex-boyfriend, but when further attempts to win Stefan fail, she attaches herself to Tyler Smallwood, the school bully. She leaves the party with Tyler and his friends for a cemetery, where they drink beer and vandalize a tomb. Tyler isolates Elena and attempts to date rape her. Suddenly, Stefan appears and defends her from Tyler. He takes Elena back to his rented room so he can pick up his car, and while there Elena asks him why he's been ignoring her. Stefan replies that Elena resembles a former love of his who died, and they are brought together.
During this time, vampiric attacks have been occurring in the town, and Stefan, who has been having unexplained periods of lost time, becomes worried that he is responsible. Because he is new to the town, many of the townspeople also suspect him.
Shortly before Elena finally finds out Stefan's secret, an alluring stranger begins to appear to her and tries to seduce her. After Elena discovers what Stefan really is, he tells her his life story and she discovers that the stranger is Damon, his evil brother. Stefan did not know he was also in the town, and Elena is sure Damon is responsible for the attacks.
Other plotlines in the books concern the theft of Elena's diary, Damon's ongoing attempts to win Elena's affections, other newcomers to the town, and the real identity of the attacker. Elena also exchanges blood with both the brothers at various points(though she never willingly did with Damon), which causes serious consequences in her life. When at waiting for Stefen at the boarding house, she feels as if a presence inside a storm is coming for her and frantically tries to escape by crossing the bridge over a river. The car she is in veers off the road and into the river, and as a result, she drowns. But because she took enough of the brothers' blood, she survives as a vampire.
The third book deals with Elena's confusion at loving both brothers, and she fears she will make the same mistake as the brothers' former love, Katherine, who made both boys into vampires. When Katherine killed herself over her guilt of causing the brothers to hate eachother for their shared love for her, they blame each other and kill each other. While having to stay out of the way of the town's new vampire hunter, Alaric, and his gang, the strange power that chased Elena into the river continues to threaten the town. Stefan, Elena, Damon, and Elena's three friends, Bonnie, Meredith, and Matt desperately try to discover what, or who, it is. When Alaric switches sides and begins helping the vampires, Meredith and he fall in love. Finally, they discover that the power is Katherine, who is not only "alive" but extremely powerful. She plans on killing the girl who stole her loves' hearts and then destroying the brothers in revenge, while also tearing apart their town and everyone in it. Elena saves everyone by sacrificing herself by pushing her and Katherine into sunlight and removing Katherine's necklace. The necklace is embedded with lapis lazuli, which is how vampires survive in the sunlight. Both women perished from the exposure.
The fourth book deals with the reactions of everyone six months after Elena's death. This story is primarily in Bonnie's point of view, and she has a dream of Elena telling her blood and hair are important over tea before she turns into a corpse and threatens her. When some girls (Caroline, Sue, Bonnie, and Vickie) have a surprise birthday party for Meredith, things turn bad. The girls decide to contact Elena using a ouija board because of the strange dream Bonnie had. The girls are beginning to suspect that there was another force other than Elena's corrupting the dream. When they make contact with Elena, she tells them there is evil in town with them, and that they are all in danger. She tells them they need to summon someone but gets interrupted while telling them the ingredients. After what appears to be a fight over who is speaking to the girls using the ouija board, Elena tells the girls to run. Before all of the girls can get out of the house, one is thrown off the balcony on the second story and falls to her death. With Sue dead, and Vickie having gone insane from the ordeal, Caroline decides to not help Bonnie and Meredith find out who is causing all of the trouble. With the help of Matt, Bonnie and Meredith realize the two ingredients are blood. So they use the ingredients to summon Stefen and Damon. The five work to solve this puzzling and dangerous mystery, with the help of the occasional dream from Elena. Vickie is eventually murdered by this force, and they realize it is the work of the vampire who created Katherine, named Klaus. In the end, after an epic battle that has brought Stefan to the brink of death, Bonnie calls Elena for help. Elena arrives with an armada of undead civil war soldiers and they carry off the evil vampire into death. Elena heals Stefan and the rest of her injured clue, but begins to be sucked away into the official afterlife. After she disappears, a few minutes pass, and then there is a great flash of light, and Elena reappears alive as a human. Stefan and Elena offer Damon a place with them, much like Katherine tried to make the boys do, but Damon refuses, saying he is not like any of them, and leaves to go off on his own again, leaving Stefan and Elena alone for good. Bonnie and Matt appear to get together and Meredith had found her love in Alaric in the previous book.
Thematically, The Vampire Diaries deals with belonging and loyalty. Although she is the most popular girl in school, Elena feels isolated from the other people in Fell's Church. As an orphan, she also doesn't have very close family ties. Stefan, being a vampire and a newcomer to a small town, is also an outsider in the community. As the series progresses, the ties of friendship on which Elena relies start to unravel, and her loyalty to everyone she knows is put to the test.