Dead To The World Book Review (Sookie Stackhous 4)

AAAARGH!  I am so beyond frustrated with this book!  My least favorite character - Bill - was hardly in it at all, and my favorite - Eric - was living with Sookie, and it managed to be my least favorite in the series so far!  I'll try to get into it as much as I can without spoilers, but that's going to be hard because most of my main problems with it are, well, spoilers.

Okay, so.  Dead To The World starts off with Bill announcing he's going to Peru for awhile - thank you God - and explaining his rather douche-y actions of the previous book.  Sookie is still set in her newly single ways, so not only is Bill going to another country, he's going to another country while Sookie is single and one of the most lusted-after girls for most of the supernatural hotties of Bon Temps and the surrounding areas.  By now, I'm grinning ear-to-ear with all the possibilities.

It's when Sookie finds Eric, half-naked and completely amnesiac, running along the side of the road that this book starts to go downhill for me.  The new Eric is supposed to be cute, vulnerable, and as cuddly as a 6'4 fanged Viking can be.  But he just seemed...wrong.  Lost and vulnerable, yes.  But none of that other endearing stuff.  I spent the entire novel missing the crap out of the old Eric, and HATING Sookie for some of the things she chose to do with new Eric.  Things that in just the last novel she had a freaking moral crisis for even contemplating.  What the hell is going on with this girl?

I'm beginning to realize that I don't like Sookie all that much, either.

While all this is happening, Sookie's brother Jason goes missing, too.  But that's really a side-plot, and not one I'll dwell on too much.  Just say, he wasn't in it all that much, and Sookie has to deal with her overwhelming worry for her only brother, and all the supernatural crap being thrown her way.

Anyway, you see some old favorites in this book, but even they aren't as lovable as in Club Dead.  You meet some new characters that may or may not be in future installments, and get your usual allotment of Sam Merlotte.  He was easily my favorite character in Dead To The World, the only one that didn't make me roll my eyes at least once while reading.

This series has been rocky from the beginning for me.  Some parts are impossible to tear yourself away from, some are just so cheesy and campy you want to laugh.  But for the most part, these novels have been really good, light, entertaining reads.  I didn't like Dead To The World.  I hated what Harris did to my absolute favorite character, and hated some of Sookie's actions.  But I'm probably going to continue with the series and hope the fifth book goes back to the easy entertainment of the first three.

Dead To The World - a very disappointed 2 out of 5 stars.