Book Review: Dead Until Dark

Sookie Stackhouse is a cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana, but she keeps to herself and doesn’t date much because of her “disability” to read minds. When she meets Bill, Sookie can’t hear a word he’s thinking. He’s the type of guy she’s waited for all of her life, but he has a disability, too–he’s a vampire with a bad reputation. When one of Sookie’s coworkers is killed, she fears she’s next.

I was really excited to read this book because I love all things vampire related, and knew that these are what they based the show True Blood on. No, I have not seen that show. I hoped to read through these books first to get the original story before I dove into the “Hollywood” version. Now, however, it is really a question of how much better the next book is going to be.

When I first started this, I was a little frustrated at the writing. Although I hadn’t expected it to be fabulous, I did hope that it would at least be interesting. It just seemed like there was so much information at the beginning that was unnecessary to the overall plot. On top of that, I knew that this was supposed to be based in Louisiana but I feel like Harris is doing a disservice to those people. They all seemed so dim-witted and droll. The only person in the novel who was remotely interesting was Sam, and he only really intrigued me at the very end.

Sookie was an okay main character. I liked that her life was spiced up with the addition of her “disability”. However following her through her daily life was rather forced. At times I really wanted to be able to ask her exactly why she cared so much about Bill. Did she really love him? Their affection for one another just really didn’t shine through (except of course in the sex scenes). Yes, there are sex scenes, so this is most definitely an adult novel.

I think I might pick up the next one to see if it is better. A few people who have read the whole series assure me that the storyline picks up, so I will give it a try.