While I’m reading January releases this weekend, I can share one of Sandie Herron’s reviews of an audio book. Here’s her review of Charlaine Harris’ Definitely Dead.
Definitely Dead
Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Mystery Book 6
Written by Charlaine Harris
Narrated by Johanna Parker
Unabridged Audiobook
Listening Length: 10 hours and 34 minutes
Publisher: Recorded Books (May 8, 2006)
Sookie Stackhouse is a barmaid at Merlotte’s Bar and Grill in Bon Temps, Louisiana. She happens to be telepathic which until recently she considered a disability. Now she has learned to harness this skill in dealing with many supernatural creatures that have become known to her following the “Great Awakening” of the vampires. Sookie met were-tiger Quinn at the recent werewolf packmaster contest. Now he was back to deliver a summons from Louisiana’s vampire queen to attend the upcoming vampire summit and to ask her on a date.
Sookie finds herself helping many “supes.” Her brother Jason’s girlfriend Crystal, a were-panther, has just had a miscarriage, so Sookie arranges for Dr. Ludwig to see her. Werewolf Alcide’s ex-girlfriend Debbie Pelt, still missing following the night of the Witch War, as the vampires were calling it, continues to plague Sookie. Now her parents and sister were at Merlotte’s looking for clues to find her. A child goes missing from the elementary school, and Sookie cannot stay away when her telepathic skills might help find the child. Sookie is happy to be distracted from the problems around her to learn of the upcoming double wedding of Detective Andy Bellefleur and local school teacher Halleigh Robinson as well as Andy’s sister Portia Bellefleur, a prominent lawyer, and her accountant beau. And then she has a wonderful time at the theatre with Quinn, only to be mugged by werewolves after the show. Sookie notes that she has “assumed the role of guardian of the weird in my little corner of our state. I was the poster girl for interspecies tolerance. … It was kind of neat, knowing stuff that other people didn’t. But it complicated my already difficult life ….”
Sookie is sad to learn of her cousin Hadley’s death and is surprised that Hadley left her entire estate to Sookie. Sookie travels to New Orleans where she befriends Hadley’s landlady Amelia, a witch who has placed a stasis spell on her apartment. Both women are stunned by the rising of a new vampire from Hadley’s place who attacks them both until help sent by the Queen pulls him away. Needing to know what happened before Hadley died, the Queen employs Amelia and several witches to perform an ectoplasmic reconstruction. The Queen reveals to Sookie that Hadley, her lover, had taken a wedding gift that she absolutely must have back before the reception planned to celebrate the nuptials. Heads will roll if the gift is not returned.
The Sookie Stackhouse novels rival the best soap operas and are written with intricacy and compelling plot lines. This sixth entry in the series was bulging at the seams with characters working both with and against Sookie. Plots formed and evaporated throughout the book that the reader might think would spin out of control due to the sheer number of plots and subplots. Yet author Charlaine Harris is able to pull it all together, amazingly leaving very little left unsaid, undone, or out of place. Sookie saves the day, yet again, returning the world to harmony.
