Genre: Urban Fantasy
Series: Sookie Stackhouse #12
Publication Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1937007447
Page Count: 336
Rating: ★★★

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.

REVIEW

It was nice to be back with Sookie and her crew again. I can sorta see where all the negative reviews are coming from- it certainly wasn't the best book in the series by any stretch- but I still have a soft spot for Sookie in all her haughty, southern glory, as well as her mismatched gang of friends.

Usually, these books have a mystery that leads to some kind of cataclysmic event. And you can usually say, "Oh, that's the one with the torture scene", or "Ah, you mean the one where Eric forgets", or "Yay, the one where Bill gets kidnapped"...that kind of thing. This book doesn't really have a tag line like that you can apply to it. There is a gentle mystery element to the plot, but whereas usually Sookie is like a little terrier chasing down clues, she didn't really do that this time. In fact, she seems to be feeling a little confused at the moment and it's affecting her behaviour. I think she knows she's on the precipice of having to make some big life decisions, and she looks around and sees other people happy and in love and having babies and it's making her realise that she is not as happy as she should be.

"I so seldom had to dispose of a human body myself, I was at a loss. Fairies turned into dust, and vampires flaked away. Demons had to be burned. Humans were very troublesome."
We also got to go around and catch up with practically every major character in the series, and also got brief updates on the more minor ones. And there are a lot of characters and it's a pretty diverse bunch so that was nice.

Overall, it definitely has a feeling of wrapping things up about it. Or maybe it's just a feeling of the calm before the storm. But, either way, it wasn't as bad as I expected it to be from some of the reviews I'd seen. And, as always, my enjoyment was helped enormously by the narrating talents of Johanna Parker, who did an amazing job with the huge cast she had to contend with.

I am looking forward to the final release, Dead Ever After, out in early 2013.

3 Stars! ★★★