Living Dead in Dallas: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel (Sookie Stackhouse, #2)

by Charlaine Harris

The second novel in #1 New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris’s “addictively entertaining”(Locus) Sookie Stackhouse series—the inspiration for the HBO® original series True Blood.

Even though Sookie has her own vampire to look out for her—her red-hot, cold-blooded boyfriend, Bill Compton—she has to admit that the bloodsuckers did save her life. So when one of the local Undead asks the cocktail waitress for a favor, she feels like she owes them.

Soon, Sookie’s in Dallas using her telepathic skills to search for a missing vampire. She’s supposed to interview certain humans involved. There’s just one condition: The vampires must promise to behave—and let the humans go unharmed. Easier said than done. All it takes is one delicious blonde and one small mistake for things to turn deadly...

• ISBN10: 1101134046
• ISBN13: 9781101134047
• Publish Date: 1 March 2002
• Publish Status: Active
• Publisher: Penguin Putnam Inc
• Imprint: Ace Books
• Format: eBook
• Pages: 304
• Language: English

Reviews

[celinenyx]

Original review, 2012 (5 stars)
This book is where, in my opinion, the Sookie Stackhouse series really start off. The plot gets more interesting and less centered around Sookie and her crush on Bill.
Also side character Eric gets more interesting, wonder how that turns out...

Reread review, 2020 (3 stars)
Almost a decade later I can see how wobbly the plot in this one is. Lafayette's murder kicks off the book, but gets completely forgotten while Sookie goes off to Dallas. It only makes a brief return in the latter part of the book, mainly, apparently to get Sookie caught up in this orgy with Eric. In addition to this, many part of the series don't quite hold up - there is a lot of semi-buried racism and homophobia going on, and it's not always appropriately challenged. Lafayette's murder, in particular.

Shout-out to Eric's orgy outfit though.

Content warnings: death of black queer person, racism, homophobia, attempted rape, suicide.

[liz089]

Reread 2019.
Really liked this one as well again. Like them going to Dallas and meeting new people :) And well.. Eric 3 Onto the next one !

[angelarenea9]

This review is full of spoilers.
This review is posted on my blog

I think I should start out by saying that I was introduced to the True Blood show before I even knew about any of the Sookie Stackhouse books, and so I already had a picture of these characters, as well as opinions of and attachments to some of them. So I found it very upsetting when one of my very favorite characters was found dead right at the beginning. Although we had not seen much of Lafayette in the first book, I had hoped (due to how important he was in the show) his role would pick up, but I guess not.
I thought that this book was a little slower than the first one, and found the maenad confusing and a little juvenile. She just sort of skipped into Bon Temps, throws a few orgies, kills a few people, then shrugs her shoulders and tosses her hair with a painful 'oh well, I have to go somewhere else now' type goodbye worthy of a flirty 13 year old talking to a crush on AIM, and flounces right back out of the series leaving Sookie, or rather Bill and Eric, to clean up the mess. It felt like a cop out ending if there ever was one. So you found the villain, and they killed someone, and they attacked you, leaving you for dead just to send a message, what are you going to do next? Answer: watch her dance off into the woods like a crazy person and do nothing. In the sarcastic words of my 18 year old younger sister 'Cool story, bro, tell it again.'
But there is another story line here, you say? It's got a much better resolution to it, you say? Well, yes, you would be at least partially correct. Sookie is hired(bullied) into helping Bill's boss, Eric's friend find his kidnapped 'brother' from a crazed religious group called the Fellowship of the Sun, because an ancient, remorseful, child molesting vampire want's a buddy when he commits suicide to escape the guilt (and gain redemption?). I wasn't sure if I felt bad for this guy because he was thoroughly brainwashed to the point of stupidity by the Fellowship of the Sun, into thinking that this was God's will, or something like that, or not because he was a self proclaimed child rapist.

But wait, you say, that's not the whole book! There is the wonderful, and romantic love story between Sookie and Bill! Now that you mention it, I do remember a deeply disturbing, and borderline terrifying relationship between the two of them. The entire book, while trying to show the deep love and devotion these two had for each other, was littered with alarming passages about Bill's controlling nature, and outbursts of rage. My favorite is when he demands that she take off Eric's shirt (given to her because her own was ruined in a vicious attack) because he could not stand to see her wear Eric's clothes. Other's included hastily brushed away bursts of fear from Sookie, and borderline rape, when Sookie, badly injured, does not feel up to sex, but Bill insists until she finally agrees. It almost played out as a what not to do for relationships, although their eventual split up at the end of the book makes me wonder if the author wrote it as a bad relationship (I hope so!).

Overall I didn't really like this book all that much, but I would recommend it to someone who liked the Vampire Diaries books, or Beautiful Creatures. I will probably finish the series, but it will most likely take me a while.

As seen at: Miss Book Reviews

Living Dead in Dallas is an interesting sequel. We have more vampires, we are introduced to Maenards and the horrible things they do and the vampire hating church is introduced.

The maenard’s seem like interesting creatures. In this world they’re incredibly old, powerful and flighty creatures. A maenard attacks Sookie as a warning to Eric, the scratch of a maenard cannot be cured by vampire’s blood so Sookie finds herself in a lot of trouble.

It looks like Sookie and Bill’s relationship is rocky in this book, I found this interesting They fought a lot and the way Bill acted had me really annoyed at him but at the same time I did feel like Sookie handled the situations a little immaturish-ly or perhaps naïvely? I think I’m already on the Eric bandwagon…

Bill is sent to Dallas and Sookie is summoned with him. Eric has ‘loaned’ Sookie out to another area that are in need of her telepathic powers. Sookie agree’s to help out but only on the condition that no human’s get’s hurt. Keeping the vampire’s to this promise is something Sookie is hell bent on so when the vampires ask her to help them find a vampire of theirs that went missing by questioning the last humans that saw him, she triple checks that the human’s will not be killed after ward.

Living Dead in Dallas was a fun read. I expected to like it a lot more that the first book in the series but I found the first book seemed to be more enjoyable and memorable to me. This one was entertaining to read and I did like, just not as much as I liked the first one.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and can’t wait to read the third in the series!

Living Dead in Dallas is an entertaining Sookie Stackhouse book that keeps you wondering what’s going on and how it’s going to turn out.

This is the 2nd book in the series. It's a great book that expands more into the Sookie world and shows more about the vampires.

[MurderByDeath]

Excellent.

[Kim Deister]

I loved this book even more than the last one! There was a lot more humor used in this book, which I liked. The storyline was fully engaging as well.

[Eve1972]

I love True Blood, I love these books, what more is there to say?! LOL

[mbtc]

I'm not sure really what to say about this book. My thoughts about it are no doubt tainted by the fact that I read the first book, then watched the first season on HBO and then read this book. The show and the book is just different enough that everything kind of blurs together and it's hard to remember what happened where.

The book just seemed like the same characters, but not a continuation of the first book like I expected. I mean Sookie went through so much in the first book that I thought that there would be more referrals back to those situations, but there were not. Also, how many times does Sookie have to get beat up? We get the point...

I guess I was just disappointed by this book, but I had high hopes for it. It wasn't a bad book by any means, just a disappointment to me.

[Terri M. LeBlanc]

The author keeps make the mistake of introducing what appears to be a big plot device (in this case the murder of Lafayette) only to abandon it for something else (in this case sending Bill and Sookie to Dallas). This leaves me hanging and pissed off because in the end she has to tie everything up and it seems rushed and pointless.