8.15.2023 | Tuesday

Dead to the World

Item: Dead to the World
Rating: 4
Author: Kim

category: Book Reviews
tag(s): adult
0 Comments

title: Dead to the World
author: Charlaine Harris
series: Sookie Stackhouse #4
published: 3 May 2005
publisher: Ace Books
genre(s): paranormal, romance
pages: 290
source: bought
format: eBook
buy/shelve it: Amazon | B&N | StoryGraph | Goodreads

rating:

| series rating:

the blurb

Sookie Stackhouse is a cocktail waitress in Bon Temps, Louisiana. She has only a few close friends, because not everyone appreciates Sookie’s gift: she can read minds. That’s not exactly every man’s idea of date bait – unless they’re undead; vampires and the like can be tough to read. And that’s just the kind of guy Sookie’s been looking for. Maybe that’s why, when she comes across a naked vampire, she doesn’t just drive on by. He hasn’t got a clue who he is, but Sookie has: Eric looks just as scary and sexy – and dead – as ever. But now he has amnesia, he’s sweet, vulnerable, and in need of Sookie’s help – because whoever took his memory now wants his life.

a few notes

content warning: ❗some graphic violence, gore❗

spicy rating: 🔥🔥🔥
language level: 0🤬s

POV: 1st person
keywords/phrases: amnesia, vampires, witches

my review

There’s just something about Sookie that I adore, even though she and I are about as different as it’s possible to be! But Bill… that’s a more complicated relationship for me. Even though he’s barely even in this book, that’s enough to remind me that I’m just not sure how I feel about him. I can appreciate his protectiveness of Sookie, that’s not over the top. But he’s just so damn oblivious to her life, and he comes across as condescending so many times. And then there’s Eric. He may not understand humans, but he picks up on all the little things that Bill is blind to. Even as he claims to care less for humans, he’s always 100% there for Sookie in his own way. Which made this book my favorite thus far! We see a different side of him, and I love the way they are together! Was the end a little bittersweet? I thought so, but how else could it be with a human and a vampire?

About Charlaine Harris

Charlaine Harris, who has been writing mysteries for over twenty years, is a native of Mississippi. Born and raised in the Delta, she began training for her career as soon as she could hold a pencil. Though her early works consisted largely of poems about ghosts and (later) teenage angst, she began writing plays when she attended Rhodes College in Memphis, and graduated to books a few years later.
After publishing two stand-alone mysteries, Harris decided to establish a series. She began the lighthearted Aurora Teagarden books with Real Murders, which garnered an Agatha nomination. Harris’s protagonist, a diminutive Georgia librarian whose life never turns out quite the way she planned, kept Harris busy for several books, but finally Harris (and Aurora) grew restless.
The result of this restlessness was the much edgier Shakespeare series — set not in England, but in rural Arkansas. The heroine of the Shakespeare books is Lily Bard, a tough and taciturn woman whose life has been permanently reshaped by a terrible crime and its consequences. In Shakespeare’s Landlord, the first in the series, Lily is caught at a moment when the shell she’s built around herself is just beginning to crack, and the books capture Lily’s emotional re-entry into the world, while also being sound mysteries.
Harris’s latest venture is a series about a telepathic barmaid in southern Louisiana. The first book in the series, Dead Until Dark, won the Anthony for best paperback mystery of 2001. Each book about Sookie Stackhouse (and her dealings with vampires and werewolves and other creatures of the night) has gathered more readers to enjoy the books’ unique blend of mystery, humor, romance, and the supernatural. The Sookie books are also being read in Japan, Spain, Greece, and Great Britain.
In addition to her work as a writer, Harris is married and the mother to three children. A former weight lifter and karate student, she is an avid reader and cinemaphile. She is a member of the vestry of St. James Episcopal Church.
Harris is a member of the Mystery Writers of America and the American Crime Writers League. She is a member of the board of Sisters in Crime, and alternates with Joan Hess as president of the Arkansas Mystery Writers Alliance.