Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Dead Until Dark is a quick read if you want something quirky and full of the mundane alongside the paranormal. It's also most definitely in the Paranormal Romance category - I would not call this Urban Fantasy at all. It's really like chick-lit with vampires and a serial killer. Even though it's called a mystery, no one is really figuring anything out about the murders. They just keep piling up (which at least kept things a bit interesting). Otherwise, the plot consists mainly of Sookie working at the bar, Sookie getting dressed and putting on make-up, and Sookie getting to know her new vampire boyfriend. It is a humorous Southern small-town vignette with some zany paranormal thrown in, and I thought it was fun (well, except for the clothes and make-up, which I just kind of skipped over).
BTW, I can't believe Stephenie Meyer really never read this before writing Twilight. Almost immediately after meeting Bill (the vampire), I was having déjà vu. Twilight is way sappier and has even less plot, and is absorbed with YA concerns like high school, but totally feels like fan fiction for this. There are so many echoes of one in the other, down to the fact that vampires have a glow and old-fashioned manners and are trying to live peacefully among humans. Sookie even has mind-reading abilities!
This book has humor, though, and the romance is more mature. Sookie has qualms about her boyfriend's methods of survival and his ethics, and she is not obsessed with him. The romance is OK - there's not a whole lot of tension there. I actually found myself more interested in Sam as a love interest and I don't normally go for the 3rd string guy in a love triangle.
Now all this isn't to say I didn't enjoy the book. I actually really did. There was enough other stuff in there for me not to feel like it was 'just a romance.' I was in the mood for something romantic and silly and quick, and the combination of Southern humor, vampires, gruesome murder, and romance was fun. But I might have gotten impatient if I were in a different mood. The chick-lit feel is not something I can go for very often. I do think I'll read the sequel when I know I'm in the mood for this kind of humor again. I'd put it in the same category as a Meg Cabot book - it had the same light-hearted appeal.
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