Club Dead / Charlaine Harris

4 out of 5 stars

Things between cocktail waitress Sookie and her vampire boyfriend Bill seem to be going excellently (apart from the small matter of him being undead) until he leaves town for a while. A long while. Bill's sinister boss Eric has an idea of where to find him, whisking her off to Jackson, Mississippi to mingle with the under-underworld at Club Dead. When she finally catches up with the errant vampire, he is in big trouble and caught in an act of serious betrayal. This raises serious doubts as to whether she should save him or start sharpening a few stakes of her own ..

2019 Re-Read

Just as telepath Sookie enjoys resting her mind around Vampire Bill, whose thoughts she can’t hear, I enjoy resting myself in this series that I’ve read and enjoyed before.

Although Sookie spends a lot of time in this book rescuing Bill, despite the fact that he’s a lying, two-timing vampire, I like it because she finally takes ownership of herself. She starts to realize that she’s being played: Half of me (pathetically) wanted to let him know I'd kept the faith; half of me wanted to get in the toolshed and sharpen me some stakes. Yes, Sookie, I think we’ve all “sharpened some stakes,” in our fantasies!

“They found the corpse in the closet of Alcide's apartment, and they hatched a plan to hide his remains." Eric sounded like that had been kind of cute of us.

"My Sookie hid a corpse?"

"I don't think you can be too sure about that possessive pronoun."

"Where did you learn that term, Northman?"

"I took 'English as a Second Language' at a community college in the seventies.”

Also:

Bill said, "She is mine."

I wondered if my hands would move. They would. I raised both of them, making an unmistakable one-fingered gesture. Eric laughed, and Bill said "Sookie!" in shocked admonishment.

"I think that Sookie is telling us she belongs to herself," Eric said softly.”

Oh how clearly Harris shows us how complicated our relationships are and how badly we can be hurt when they go awry.