4.26.2023 | Wednesday

Dead Until Dark

category: Book Reviews
tag(s):
0 Comments

Dead Until Darktitle: Dead Until Dark
author: Charlaine Harris
series: Sookie Stackhouse #1
published: 1 May 2001
publisher: Ace Books
genre(s): paranormal, romance, thrillers
pages: 311
source: bought
format: eBook
buy/shelve it: Amazon | B&N | Goodreads

rating: four-stars | series rating: four-stars

the blurb

Sookie Stackhouse is just a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. Until the vampire of her dreams walks into her life-and one of her coworkers checks out....
Maybe having a vampire for a boyfriend isn't such a bright idea.


❗❗ content warning: some graphic violence ❗❗

a few notes

keywords/phrases: vampires, shifters, romance
mood reading: witty, fun, engrossing
awards: Locus Award Nominee for Best Fantasy Novel (2001), Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original (2001), Dilys Award Nominee (2001), Agatha Award Nominee for Best Novel (2000), Compton Crook Award Nominee (2001)

my review

The setting is wonderful, in small-town Louisiana. There is a mood and tone to Bon Temps and parts surrounding that really comes through the writing and brings the reader deep into the world of vampires and shifters.

I love Sookie Stackhouse as a heroine! Part of what makes her such a wonderful character is that she is not a damsel in distress, just waiting to be rescued. She’s also not outwardly a warrior. Instead, she’s fierce and badass in her own way. She’s also smart, humble, kind and compassionate, all of which make her completely believable as a character. But beyond Sookie, the other characters of Bon Temps are equally as interesting. There were shades of people I know in each of them, which made the entire story, paranormal though it is, somehow feel possible.

quoteables

There was enough tension in the room to send a fleet of the nervous running for their tranquilizers.

It was one of God’s jokes that such a dumb mind had been put in such an eloquent body.


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.

Rating Report
plot
four-stars
characters
four-stars
writing
four-stars
pacing
four-stars
Overall: four-stars

reading challenges:

  • 2023 Beat the Backlist Reading Challenge
  • 2023 Linz the Bookworm Reading Challenge
  • 2023 PopSugar Reading Challenge
::spread the love::

Leave a Reply