Dead Until Dark / Charlaine Harris

4 out of 5 stars

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.

2019 Re-Read

I don’t know how other people handle stress, but my favourite diversion is to re-read books that I know that I will enjoy. When my life is uncertain, I love the certainty of an entertaining book. So, as I prepare for major life changes, I picked up Dead Until Dark a few nights ago and found myself completely immersed in the life of Sookie Stackhouse in Bon Temps, Louisiana. How can you not have a good time in a town called Good Times? It’s silly, soap-opera type fun.

Since Sookie knows a thing or two about life changes, I started to wonder if that wasn’t why I had zeroed in on this particular series. In this very first book, we meet her when she is still an ordinary person. Or at least as ordinary as a telepathic bar maid in a small town can be. This is the first installment of the changes that open up her life, giving her access to a whole new world that she hadn’t previously been aware of.

I love the very first sentence: I’d been waiting for the vampire for years when he walked into the bar. Well, I’ve been waiting for years for retirement and I will achieve it shortly. As I watch Sookie change and adapt as her world opens up, I feel like I can change and adapt too, and adjust to this new reality.