Deadlocked

I don't know how I managed to miss Deadlocked (#292) which came out in 2012 as the latest in Charlaine Harris's popular Sookie Stackhouse series, but I did.  It wasn't until I picked up Dead Ever After, the final book in the series that I realized I was missing a piece of the story.  As luck would have it, on our regular Friday visit to the library (where I was valiantly resisting the call of all the new books on the shelves so I can finally get around to reading some of the choice items sitting around my house in piles!) I went over to where my husband was perusing the shelves, and there was Deadlocked, just waiting for me to pick it up.  It seemed like fate...

Sookie is still with Eric Northman, her vampire lover, but things haven't been going so well between them lately.  So when Sookie is summoned to his house to meet the King of Las Vegas, Felipe de Castro, she's reluctant to go, since she's afraid that one of the reasons Felipe wants to see her is to figure out her role in the death of his right hand vampire, Victor.  Things go from bad to worse when she discovers Eric drinking from another woman, which was bad enough, but when the woman's body turns up later that evening on the front lawn, the police get involved.  Could Eric have killed her?  Or is something else going on here?  It's hard to tell who's causing Sookie the most problems this time around; the vampires, the werewolves who seem to have played a role in the murder, or her Fae relatives living with her.  Sookie's on an emotional roller coaster as her loyalties are tested and she's betrayed by her nearest and dearest.

I think the thing I like best about Charlaine Harris's series (which I started reading from the publication of Dead After Dark) is the fact that Sookie is spunky, brave, loyal to a fault, and she rarely, if ever, looses her sense of humor despite all the terrible things that have happened to her, her family and her friends over the course of the story arc.  I have no problem reading about Sookie's world and all the supernatural encounters, but I have to admit that after about five minutes of the HBO series based on these books, True Blood I knew I could never watch all the sex and gore on the screen.  It all looks more like the cover art for the book series, kind of brightly colored and unreal, when I imagine it in my head, and I'd prefer to keep it that way!  Needless to say, as soon as I finish writing this post, I'll be picking up Dead Ever After to find out how the story ends.