Dead Until Dark

While True Blood saw this series come to life on the small screen, the books are a lighter and deeper option for anyone who loved the show but wants to get more background info. 

I read this series before the show came out and thoroughly enjoyed all the funny bits that weren’t as prevalent in the HBO version. Sookie was funny and fierce as I recall, which is an excellent combo for a leading lady to be.

The True Blood TV series was based on Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse books, though the TV version veered off the books’ path, which is to be expected. If you’ve only watched the series, you owe it to yourself to read the books. Harris has created in Sookie Stackhouse a charming southern character full of grace and humour. Sookie also has telepathy, which I’d always thought might be fun to have, until I met Sookie. And Harris doesn’t pull her punches—she puts Sookie through the ringer in every book. Each successive novel adds new twists and depth to the story, always upping… show more.

At the outset, Sookie Stackhouse seems like a normal young woman living the best life she can in a not-so-fabulous part of rural America. She has all the problems you’ve likely faced yourself. But she has a secret that sets her apart from everyone else: you’ll never keep a secret from her. She doesn’t just read a room well, Sookie can hear your very thoughts… and you disgust her, son. But all that changes the day she meets a man whose mind is closed to her. 

Harris’ legacy character from Dead Until Dark spawned a powerhouse series filled with vampires,… show more.

You will not be able to resist the characters in this story. This world houses legal vampires who subsist on a beverage called Tru Blood. Then add in a mind-reading waitress in love with one of them and a love-sick shapeshifter. Just to mix it up a bit more, a serial killer is on a rampage. Dead Until Dark’s twisted and surprising plot is both enthralling and alarming. I could not put it down. It made my toes tingle!

A telepathic waitress begins a relationship with a vampire while a serial killer stalks their small Louisiana town. Tell me with a straight face that that blurb didn’t hook you! While this one is technically an adult book, it’s campy and fun and reads like a young adult novel, full of mystery, adventure, and supernatural creatures. This is the first novel in the Sookie Stackhouse books, which later became the inspiration for the True Blood TV series. Needless to say, vampire books = inappropriate age gap romances, but what can I say, I’m here for it! 

I started the Sookie Stackhouse mysteries when Dead Until Dark was first released, and after all the Draculas and Lestats I’d read about before, the idea of a vampire named Bill totally charmed me. I love the way the books blend the horror and mystery of vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures with the reality of having to serve drinks at a bar, do laundry, and get the driveway paved. I enjoyed every Sookie book and story, and the fact that Harris ended the series on her own terms was such a power move!

This is another book that I started reading because I loved the television series, in this case, True Blood. Book one, Dead until Dark, is the source for season one of the television series.

Charlaine Harris has an easy-to-read writing style, and her main character, Sookie Stackhouse, is an amusing character to follow. Her interactions with the vampires, who’ve “come out of the coffin,” make for lively reading. I loved the twist that she’s telepathic but can’t read the minds of vampires.

I’ve read the first two books in the series and plan to keep reading.

A great new view on the vampire genre. Vampires are no longer hiding in the shadows but out and proud. Feisty barmaid Sookie from a small town in Louisiana meets and falls in love with a vampire that has moved to town, bringing passion, excitement, adventure, and death into her small-town world. Thoroughly entertaining and in my opinion the books are better than the series which I also loved but must be seen as a separate entity as they veer so much from the novels that it no longer follows them which I must admit I found a pity.