Dead Ever After (Sookie Stackhouse, #13)

by Charlaine Harris

[inlibrisveritas]

I have finally taken the time to finish this series! Finally! The last two books were somewhat difficult to get through, not because they were bad but because they were sort of on autopilot the whole time and you could see all the loose ends being tied up too close everything out.

Dead Ever After is actually a decent send-off, throwing a few curveballs I didn’t see coming. Sookie has been through a lot over thirteen books and it’s really interesting to see how far she’s come, and how much she can handle now. I did like getting to see everyone and kind of comparing where everyone started vs where they’ve all ended up. I will say I can tell this series was something Harris wanted to be done. It’s been a long time coming and it’s sort of ‘tired’. The story itself is sort of fluttered between being boring and formulaic, and interesting and fun. I used to love the normalcy that Sookie maintained in her own home, but in the later books, I’ve grown tired of seeing her plot out meals and clean. A lot of the characters are on par with the way they’ve always been but some seem to act weird for the sake of making the story work…it wouldn’t be a problem if it was something that stemmed from more than closing the books out in a normal way.

Sookie’s relationships have always been a focus (duh, paranormal romance) and while I’ve always enjoyed getting to know the different guys she’s dated…I had hope that for some reason the unlikely relationship of Sookie and Eric would pan out. I mean I’ve never seen it as a viable long-term situation because Sookie has always been completely against being a vampire, which sort of shortens the likelihood of Eric sticking around when she starts getting older…but damn. I’m not mad at the direction the book went with this, I just wish it wasn’t something I saw coming.

Overall I’m glad I grabbed this one. I didn’t really enjoy the previous book a lot and I wasn’t sure I’d ever get around to Dead Ever After, but it was really nice to kind of see all of the characters off and close the proverbial cover on this story.