Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris

A Paranormal, 2002 by Publisher, 291 Pages

What I Didn’t Like:

Bury your gays much? Actually, this is probably only one of MANY tropes featured in the two books of the series I’ve read. If you have tropes that you personally cannot stand, this might be a series to avoid as it seems to be chock full of them.
The characters really seemed to adjust to a dead friend quickly and brush right past it. No grief, no down time. That bothered me, especially when another character (whom you’ve just barely met) dies and seems to get a bigger pang of grief.
Maybe forcing the love triangle. I thought we settled this in the first book but it keeps coming back. Not a fan of that. If you’re choosing a partner, you should be choosing them. We don’t need to keep coming back to this same idea over and over again.
I don’t remember the first book feeling so outdated on its dealing with anyone even slightly “different” in race or religion. Somehow it seemed to keep cropping up in this one and it really bothered me. Sookie herself gets upset when anyone wants to mistrust Bill because he’s a vampire but she’s also fine with her brother being homophobic? That didn’t work for me.

I still like the idea of vampires (and now other supernatural creatures) being able to come out of the woodwork and show themselves for who they are. It’s an interesting concept.
The idea of vampires policing their own kind intrigued me in the first book and it’s played up even more in this one. You get a glimpse into the politics of the vampires outside of the one area and how those might relate to each other. It’s really a next level to the idea that I enjoyed.
The romance works. Bill and Sookie burn hot and are an interesting couple. They’re not perfect and their relationship is young enough to be forced to endure all sorts of issues, but that is done well and is relatively relatable.

This one felt a little more predictable than the previous book but still intrigued me and gave me interesting information about the world.