Book Review: Club Dead by Charlaine Harris (Sookie Stackhouse #3)

1 Down, 24 to Go on Goodreads Challenge

Cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse is forced to rethink her feelings for her vampire boyfriend Bill Compton. Sure, he’s hot, the sex is amazing, and telepathic Sookie can’t literally hear Bill’s thoughts, making him the only man she has ever been able to get close to romantically. Yet being in a vampire’s world has a downside: the blood, the beatings, the bodies, and, now, Bill’s betrayal. A betrayal with deadly repercussions.

Sookie is dismayed when Bill leaves town on a mysterious mission, giving her nothing but a vague explanation and instructions on what to do if anything happens to him. Then he goes missing in Mississippi, and Sookie sets off to find him. With the help of Eric, the tall, blond, dangerous vampire sheriff, she infiltrates the sinister underground hangout Club Dead, looking for information. What she finds out is not pleasant. Bill has been kidnapped, and the vampires who are holding him captive are now after Sookie. She must use all her wits to find and save Bill, before he winds up deader than he already is, and she winds up just plain dead.

Club Dead is the third in the Sookie Stackhouse series and my favorite book so far. Two reasons: Sookie and Eric. Sookie is tougher and more resourceful than ever, despite violent attempts on her life by supernatural beings and unhappy discoveries about her boyfriend’s loyalty.  She doesn’t know if Eric is a friend or a foe, yet her refusal to be cowed by him seems to increase his regard for her. In more ways than one.

Fans of the True Blood HBO show, which is based on the Sookie Stackhouse series, will appreciate the novels’ irreverent blend of horror, mystery, sex, and humor. In one way, I prefer the books, because the stories focus on Sookie, the grounded, spirited, working-class girl at the center of all the chaos. More often than not, she is the one rescuing herself as well as the powerful, superhuman men who are drawn to her.