Episode 162 – The Awakening (Vampire Diaries #1)
The Worst Bestsellers
Worst Bestsellers
4.5 • 609 Ratings
🗓️ 23 November 2020
⏱️ 89 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Like a newborn vampire, we’re always thirsty for more supernatural teen drama around here. We turned to a finely-aged vintage, The Awakening (Vampire Diaries #1) by L. J. Smith, and we were thrilled to be joined by Lily Sparks (@lilyroro), author of non-vampire, but still high stakes, YA novel Teen Killers Club. Join us as we extoll all the ways L. J. Smith’s teen vampires are cooler than Stephenie Meyer’s teen vampires, including the best take on a love triangle we’ve ever seen in our storied history.
Readers advisory: Here.
Footnotes: Carmilla (YouTube series)
Candy pairing: Kait says Hershey’s Special Dark Kisses, Lily says a vanished spicy-sour candy of her youth, Renata says mini Milky Way Midnights.
Coming up next: Go Ask Alice by Anonymous.
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(But no pressure, we’re also happy if you get these items from your local library or independent bookstore.)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the worst bestsellers, where we read about Queen Bees and Vampire Teen, so you don't have to. |
| 0:17.7 | I'm Kate. |
| 0:18.7 | And I'm Renata. |
| 0:19.5 | And for this episode, we read The Awakening by |
| 0:22.7 | L.J. Smith, Vampirey's number one. Joining us to discuss this seminal piece of Y.A. Vampire |
| 0:29.9 | history is Lily, debut Y.A. author of Teen Killers Club. Hello, Lily. Hello. |
| 0:38.5 | So happy to be here. |
| 0:40.3 | Thanks for joining us. |
| 0:41.5 | Thanks for joining us. |
| 0:44.6 | Thanks for picking this fucking fantastic book. |
| 0:53.2 | I, you know, and it's funny because someone had just asked if I had ever read vampire diaries. |
| 0:53.7 | And I was like, no, it seems like I should. |
| 0:56.5 | And then I read this and I was like, yeah, I should have. |
| 1:03.8 | This book, I couldn't believe it's from 1991. |
| 1:07.2 | Like, on some level, I guess it does feel like it's been around for a while, but I didn't realize it was quite so old. |
| 1:15.7 | And yet it still feels as fresh as just your first sip of blood. |
| 1:24.1 | Yeah, it did feel like it held up really well. |
| 1:27.8 | I had also never read it before, but aside from like the very choice fashion in this book, |
| 1:35.2 | it didn't feel any, it didn't feel like grounded in 1991 at all. |
| 1:41.9 | I can see how it was easy to flex this into a |
| 1:45.7 | currently running or very |
| 1:47.8 | recent past running |
... |
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