Dead and Gone-Charlaine Harris

OK. I have a confession to make. I got really impatient to read this book; I knew I wouldn't be able to get it from the Library for like, MONTHS. So I, um, downloaded it online. I know! I'm a jerk! I've done a lot of questionable things in my time, but this is one that I actually feel pretty guilty about. So don't tell anyone, ok?

As I got through the first few chapters of my totally pirated copy, I started to think that maybe I'd been hoaxed. There was no way that this stuff had been written by Charlaine Harris. I made a quick trip to the bookstore and compared my copy against the book. Dude. My copy was not a hoax. The book just wasn't....well it wasn't any good.

Now, one of the best things about this series is Sookie's voice. It's really strong and you get a perfect sense of who this character is in like, a paragraph. Sadly, Sookie's voice was totally missing from Dead and Gone. Seriously, she didn't even sound southern in this one. Total dissapointment.

Also dissapointing was that none of the characters really breathed like they have in the previous books. They seemed sort of like cardboard cutouts of their former selves. Even the Eric/Sookie sex scenes were kind of...boring.

I'm going to chalk the epic fail of this book up to the fact that Ms. Harris has more than likely been totally consumed with work on the HBO series based on the Sookie books, True Blood. Maybe she just sort of rushed this one to press or something. Whatever the case, I'm not ready to give up on this series yet, and will totally read the next installment. Maybe next time, I'll even BUY it.