Review – Dead in the Family (Sookie Stackhouse, Book 10) by Charlaine Harris (3/5 stars)

This is the tenth book in the Sookie Stackhouse series.  Honestly I wasn’t all that thrilled with Dead and Gone (book 9) and was worried that this series was going down the tubes.  This book was better than book 9, but it was still pretty unfocused.  It does tie up a lot of loose ends though; I just wish there had been a good solid plot to follow through the book.

Sookie is recovering from the horrible torture and deaths in Dead and Gone (Book 9).  She is looking for fairies lurking around every corner and is jumpy.  Sookie is trying to make her relationship with Eric work, but there is a lot of outside interference.  Society is still reeling from the revelation that weres dwell among normal people and this is causing strain within the local packs.  A dead body shows up in Sookie’s backyard and she has to figure out how it got there.  Then to make tense things more difficult Eric’s maker shows up with an out of control vampire child.  Additionally Sookie’s fairy brother Claude wants to be Sookie’s roommate and Bill is still incredibly sick from the silver poisoning he got in Dead and Gone.  As I said there are a ton of little things going on here.

This is a book that mishmashes a whole bunch of little plots together.  Many things are resolved but there is no over-arcing storyline and really no engaging plot to push you through the book.  Sookie’s problems with the fairies are, for the most part, dealt with.  Some trouble with the pack is also resolved.  The trouble with the werewolves coming out in society never really comes to a head but is always lurking in the background.  Bill’s issues of silver poisoning are also dealt with.

Sookie was much more herself than she was in book 9.  I thought in general the characters acted more like themselves than they did in Book 9 too.   The writing was better and I didn’t catch any blatant grammatical errors (like I did in book 9).

Overall this was a somewhat entertaining read.  A lot of loose ends are tied up but there really isn’t a large story to carry over to the next book.  I am hoping that Harris starts a new story-arc in the next book.  This wasn’t the most engaging Sookie book I have read, but it wasn’t as bad as Dead and Gone either.   It was a bit scattered and I wish it had had a more contiguous plot, but it was okay overall.  I am starting to worry that the Sookie Stackhouse series is dying the slow death that the Anita Blake series has died, but this book gives me hope that maybe things are getting better.

This book goes towards the following reading challegnes:
– The 100+ Book Reading Challenge