Living Dead in Dallas ~ Review

Title: Living Dead in Dallas
Author: Charlaine Harris
Pages: 291
Genre: Paranormal Romance, Fantasy
Published: March 2002

First Sentence: Andy Bellefleur was as drunk as a skunk.

Waiting tables, sweeping floors, reading minds and solving mysteries for the undead. It’s all in a day’s work for Sookie…
Cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse is on a streak of real bad luck. First, her co-worker gets murdered and no one seems to care. Then Sookie is attacked – and poisoned – late one night by some weird and apparently mythical beast. She only survives because the local vampires roll up and graciously suck the poison from her veins (like they didn’t enjoy it). But in return the blood-suckers need a favour.
Which is why Sookie ends up in Dallas, using her telepathic skills to search for a missing vampire, on the condition that her undead friends don’t do anything, well, vampiric while she’s there. Easier said than done. All it takes is one delicious blonde and one small mistake for things to turn deadly…

Some of you may recall that I wasn’t that impressed with the first book in this series, Dead Until Dark. This is for a couple reasons, including the sporadic writing, and under-developed suspense and characterization. I knew that Living Dead in Dallas was supposed to be better, as it has received much better reviews. After realizing that I should go into these books with a light-hearted view, rather than taking them seriously, I decided to try the next book in the series.

I’m glad that I did. As soon as I finished the first page I was already fully involved in the story. This probably has to do a lot with the fact that I started already knowing the characters and the background, but I was also simply enjoying the way it was written. The new way of viewing the story definitely helped.

I was slightly worried that this would be a “template” series, like the Women’s Murder Club series or the Stephanie Plum series. But that wasn’t the case. This book took the story to different places and dealt with much different themes. Most likely this is the reason I enjoyed it so much.

I found myself getting a little confused at times by the plot and the mystery because there was so many things going on, but all together it was easy to follow. Also, the characterization was much better. I ended up liking Bill a lot more in this book than the first one. He seemed to be more caring, and had more of a personality. Eric also stood out to me as someone who I like much better now. Harris is finally building the depth to these characters that should have been present after the first book.

All together, I enjoyed this book a lot more than the first one. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean I fully enjoyed it, but it was better. I recommend this to anyone who enjoyed the first one, or wanted more.

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