Dead Ever After by Charlaine Harris

Book 13. The final book in the Sookie Stackhouse series - the series that inspired the TV show "True Blood." I didn't start reading the series until last Summer when I became hooked on True Blood. And I quickly became just as hooked on this series. I'm pretty sure I went through the first 12 books in two weeks...I just couldn't put them down. So when I found out that I was going to have to wait almost an entire year for the next one, I was distraught. When I found out that book 13 was going to be the final book, I developed extremely high expectations for how the author would end this series. I have to say, I was a little disappointed.

I don't know if Charlaine Harris originally intended "Dead Ever After" to be the final book in the Sookie Stackhouse series or not, but the whole thing felt a bit rushed. The big tease was that we were finally going to find out who Sookie would end up with. There were so many possibilities but in the end, the decision seemed to come out of nowhere and with very little justification. There were several story lines that were left open at the end of book 12 - enough that you would need more than one book to wrap everything up. But one book was all they got and it definitely wasn't the exit that many fans had hoped for.

I will say though, that the series as a whole is excellent. If you are a fan of True Blood I highly recommend them. The original intention was for the show to closely follow the story lines in each book. That lasted until this last season (season 5) when True Blood went completely off book (see what I did there?) and ventured into unknown territory. As a fan of both, it made the books that much more exciting to me. Because you essentially get the same characters but two completely different stories. If you are interested in the Sookie Stackhouse Series here are all 13 books, in order:

Dead Until Dark
Living Dead in Dallas
Club Dead
Dead to the World
Dead As a Doornail
Definitely Dead
All Together Dead
From Dead to Worse
Dead and Gone
Dead in the Family
Dead Reckoning
Deadlocked
Dead Ever After