Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

Sookie Stackhouse is a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. She's quiet, she 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....

My first EVER vampire book, although this seems to be a bit of a cross between vampire and cozy murder mystery so I am not sure that everyone would count it as a true vampire story but that's okay!

Sookie Stackhouse lives a pretty quiet life, not really by choice, but because she can hear the thoughts of everyone around her and that gets to be quite overwhelming! Usually she tries to block everyone's thoughts but even that is pretty tiring so she does her work and then spends her time with the grandmother that she lives with, and the brother that she doesn't necessarily always get along with! That is, until she meets Bill. Bill is different because, well, she can't hear any of his thoughts. Bill is also a vampire who is looking to return to the hometown that he lived in a couple of hundred years.

Things are changing for vampires. They are grudgingly being accepted by most of the community (even appearing on Oprah), and they are protected by the law, but that doesn't mean that everyone accepts them. As Sookie gets to know Bill, she also gets to meet some of the crowd that he hangs around with, and they aren't all quite as civilised as Bill!!

When one of Sookie's coworkers is found dead, there are several suspects. When another girl is killed, suspicion is more strongly focused on two people close to Sookie - Bill and her brother Jason.

Quicker than you can say "I Vant to Suck Your Blood" the bodies are stacking up and Sookie is being targeted by the murderer. She has to find out who the murderer is before she becomes a victim herself.

Whilst I did really enjoy this book, I did have a couple of issues with it. The first is that when one of the people closest to Sookie is murdered, she is pretty much over it in a couple of chapters. The other is that if this is supposed to be a murder mystery then Sookie doesn't really seem all that focused on finding the killer. She does, but it is almost as though she is caught unawares until he is finally upon her, trying once again to kill her. It would seem that being able to read people's minds would make it easy to solve a murder mystery but it seems that some people are harder to read than other, including Sam, Sookie's boss who is another person in Sookie's life who is not quite what he seems!

Having said that, I did enjoy this book, and will be reading more of the series. It is certainly a change of pace from the other books that I have been reading. Can't wait to read more about the vampires, shape shifters and other creatures that live in Sookie Stackhouse's small time Louisiana.

Rating 4/5

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