Title: Dead Until Dark
Author: Charlaine Harris
Series: Sookie Stackhouse #1
Rating Out of 5: 4 (Really good read!)
My Bookshelves: Dark fantasy, Paranormal fantasy, Vampires
Pace: Medium
Format: Novel
Publisher: Ace Fantasy
Year: 2001
5th sentence, 74th page: I began squirming to the bed table, not happy but resigned.

Sookie Stackhouse is a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. She’s quiet, keeps to herself, and doesn’t get out much. Not because she’s not pretty. She is. It’s just that, well, Sookie has this sort of “disability”. She can read minds. And that doesn’t make her too dateable. And then along comes Bill. He’s tall, dark, handsome – and Sookie can’t hear a word he’s thinking. He’s exactly the type of guy she’s been waiting for all her life…

But Bill has a disability of his own: He’s a vampire with a bad reputation. He hangs with a seriously creepy crowd, all suspected of – big surprise – murder. And when one of Sookie’s coworkers is killed, she fears she’s next….

I’ve had this suggested again and again and again. So I finally decided that it was necessary to read this. And I’m really glad it did. It turned into one of those good-bad guilty pleasure stories. Something that I want to keep reading, but not the jaw dropping, earth shattering story that I was half expecting. This might be because I could see a lot of parallels with Twilight. Which I hate.

Sookie is kind of a fun and entertaining voice through which to tell the story. She is witty, and a little sarcastic. And not in the slightest bit tough. Which is a complete departure from the kinds of stories that I normally read. She’s a waitress with a keen sense of intelligence and loyalty – but she does tend to lean on the men around her for support. For somebody who normally reads stories about fiercely independent women, this was actually a really lovely departure that I continuously thought about and dreamed of.

Bill honestly bores me. Which is probably the biggest problem that I have with this book. He’s just a vampire that runs around. And courts Sookie. And just someone that wasn’t really engaging. Actually, the main reason why I want to continue reading this series is Sookie and her friend Sam. Bill is handsome, dark and runs around in the dark. That is basically it. Maybe in Living Dead in Dallas he will become a little more multi-layered.

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Living Dead in Dallas ->

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