Southern Vampire Mysteries #1-9 by Charlaine Harris
Publication: Penguin Group, ebooks
Genre: Urban Fantasy, Romance
Rating: 
average
Read: June 2009
Find paper books @ Amazon (click pictures above) or IndieBound (7-set boxset)
In one sentence: Fun, utterly addicting, slightly ridiculous, and a bit refreshing (like a limeade).
Series summary from Amazon:
Cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse is no typical Southern belle. She can read minds. And she’s got a thing for vampires. Which, in a town like Bon Temps, Louisiana, means she’ll have to watch her back—and neck…
I’ve been aware of the Southern Vampire Mysteries/Sookie Stackhouse books ever since the TV show first showed up, but I never thought to actually try reading them. I think maybe the show left a bad impression on me? But then practically everyone on my Twitter follow list started talking about them, and I thought “If they like the series, it can’t be all bad, right?” So I started reading the first book. Then I quickly went through #1-9, in, er, maybe a week. Ha! So, yeah, I loved it. It’ll be tough to talk about the books individually without giving away spoilers, so I’ve decided to just talk about the series as a whole.
My absolute favorite thing about the series is how Sookie isn’t afraid to speak her opinions and talk back to some rather scary people (who could, in fact, kill her), and how she didn’t fall into the trap of “OMG WE MUST BE FOREVER FIRST PERSON I SLEPT WITH.” (That might count as a small spoiler.) Sookie manages to get herself into trouble, like, all the time, but she also manages to get herself back out of it.
The “mysteries” part of the story tends to take the backseat a lot of times to Sookie’s various personal relationships (both professional and otherwise), but some of them were quite interesting as well as gory and scary. They’re really exciting, too, which is partly why I sped through the series so quickly. I wanted to know what happened next!
As a whole, I think probably the SVM world is pretty ridiculous (or maybe just the people are). I tended to go “WTF?” a lot. For instance, Sookie’s heritage, which, while sounding perfectly logical in the book, came from what seemed way out of left field and left me scratching my head afterward. Also, a lot of times Ms. Harris springs this revelations on you which were so obvious it made me wonder WTF her characters were smoking, not to have known that thing before. Like, for instance, the revelation that vampires are actually dead people who eat other people and not just unfortunate victims of a virus that makes them allergic to sunlight, garlic, pointy bits of wood, etc. Like, duh. (When was there any evidence that they weren’t? I didn’t see any.)
Anyway, it’s crazy, but it’s lots of fun, too. The sex scenes got more and more explicit as the series went on, which made me uncomfortable (I skipped them, mostly), but they didn’t overtake the whole book, luckily. I was also a little puzzled by Sookie’s wardrobe, which sounded a lot like clothing guests on Jerry Springer would wear.
So! To sum up: lots of silly fun with some nice romance and interesting plots. It’s brain fluff, but it’s awesome brain fluff.
Get your own from Amazon or IndieBound.
Other reviews: Amy’s Blog (#1-8) | Musings of a Bookish Kitty (#1-6) | Sarah’s Reviews (#1-7) | Life Beyond Twilight (overall)
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