My Ramblings on Deadlocked by Charlaine Harris

Deadlocked 
By: Charlaine Harris
Release Date: May 1, 2012
Author Website

Summary:

With Felipe de Castro, the Vampire King of Louisiana (and Arkansas and Nevada), in town, it’s the worst possible time for a body to show up in Eric Northman’s front yard—especially the body of a woman whose blood he just drank.

Now, it’s up to Sookie and Bill, the official Area Five investigator, to solve the murder. Sookie thinks that, at least this time, the dead girl’s fate has nothing to do with her. But she is wrong. She has an enemy, one far more devious than she would ever suspect, who’s out to make Sookie’s world come crashing down. (from goodreads.com)

My Ramblings:

I can not even begin to express how much I love the Sookie Stackhouse books. It's one of the few series that I can read over and over again. However this book was just okay for me. I hate to admit it, but I think I might agree that it's time for Sookie's story to come to a close, which it will after the next book. That isn't to say I didn't enjoy this book, I did, but I felt like it was just more of the same. 

Sookie and Eric are in love but having trouble due to the whole betrothal to the Queen issue that Appius left them with.  I missed the way their relationship used to be- they were either fighting with witty remarks and double entendres or making up in spectacular fashion. Their relationship in this book seemed a little too mundane.

The other thing that bothered me a little was how dense Sookie seemed in this book. I know that she has never been the smartest person in the room, but to me she has always had a level of street smarts that kept her alive even in the most impossible situations. In this book there were several points where Sookie was puzzling  over what something means (Who could have let that girl in for Eric to feed on? What did Eric mean by that? Who is the bad guy? etc.) when the answer is so obvious the reader. I wanted to yell the answers at her just so we could move on. 

However, the second half of the book, when everything really started coming together really worked for me. We were back to the action, to people fighting for their lives or each other and having to make tough decisions. This is where the book really shines, in fact it's where the entire series shines. With books like this I don't really want the reality of what a normal relationship looks like, or the normal working of a bar, what I want, and what I fell in love with, was the absurdity of  these books. 

So was it a great book? Not really. I do suspect that when the final book comes out next year and I have the ability to read the entire series through that this book will fit seamlessly in with the one before it and the new one. So it's definitely worth picking up and reading, if only to get a chance to visit with these characters again!