In this day and age it's the time of the Vampires. You have Twilight and True blood and Vampire Diaries but don't let them keep you from watching. While many tend to compare it with the two, it's actually very different. Vampire Diaries, based off a series written 15 years before Twilight,is about a girl Elena who just lost her parents when a new guy, Stefan Salvatore, comes to town but with Stefan also comes trouble, his brother Damon Salvatore. This show is definitely the middle of Twi and True Blood. It has a romance like Twilight and the intensity of True Blood. What this show has is a lot of twists and turns that you don't expect.
The only flaw may be the characters. While there is a lot of character development, it really only applies to the main ones. The supporting characters like Caroline and Matt seem flat. Even though Matt seems to have some roundness, Caroline just doesn't seem to change, she is always that annoying whiny girl;there are even times when Elena can be naive.
All in all, despite it's flaws, every episode has a mystery to it; it's hard to guess what's going to happen. Believe me at the end of every episode, maybe even in between commercials, you begin to speculate what the end possibilities could be.