1.5 Stars ( )

While I am glad all the short stories are now in one book so you don't have to track them down in other books, there really was only one story that was really needed to help understand a few things in the series. The rest of the short stories were kind of side stories that didn't add or take away anything from the larger series. ( )

I am usually disappointed when my favorite books are adapted for television or movies. Sookie Stackhouse was a favorite character of mine before HBO started their seven seasons of True Blood. As usual, the film version bore very little resemblance to the books. The first season was pretty close.....but it veered completely off course after that. In my mind, the books and the show are two completely different stories. HBO changed major plot points, added characters, and left out major portions of the books. And unfortunately most of the things they left out, or changed substantially, were my favorite parts of the series. Not that I didn't enjoy True Blood....I did. I was just disappointed they didn't follow the books. Not surprised. Just disapppointed. Now that the show is over, I want to revisit this entire series and put Sookie, her friends, and Bon Temps back into my mind the way Charlaine Harris created them.

While she was writing the series, Harris published several short stories set in Sookie's world. They added some nice side stories to the series, and were nestled into sweet themed anthology collections alongside stories by other authors I love like Jim Butcher and Rachel Caine. It's a bit difficult to go back and read all the stories since they were originally published in several different books. Then I saw a blurb for this new book -- yay!! All of the Sookie short stories collected in one book!

For anyone who wants to read the entire series in chronological order, the Southern Vampire series wiki page has a list that includes both the books and the short stories: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Southern_Vampire_Mysteries

For those who watched the HBO show but haven't read the books -- I highly recommend reading this series, with these additional stories. There are 13 books in the series, written from 2001 - 2013. The books are SO much better than the television series! I highly recommend the Southern Vampire series to anyone who likes supernatural, urban fantasy. Sookie Stackhouse is a waitress in Bon Temps, LA. She tends to keep to herself because she can hear other people's thoughts. Her abilities tend to make people think she's strange. She's always wanted to meet a vampire ever since they came "out of the coffin," revealing their existence to the world. One night she meets Bill Compton....a vampire who has moved into his old family home in Bon Temps. Her life will never be the same!

There are no new stories in this book....it's a re-release of 10 previously published short stories. Readers can enjoy them all in one place, rather than spread between several anthology books. For me, that's great because I have been waiting to reread the series until I had all of the short stories and I was a couple books short of having them all. I'm just a bit OCD like that when it's time to a revisit to a favorite series. And I can have my Sookie shelf in my bookcase....without having to add anthologies that include other stories.

This means I can move Sookie up to the top of my TBR and start re-reading!! :) I originally read this series with my husband. When new books arrived we used to argue over who got to read it first. Once we even played a boardgame to determine the winner. I lost, of course, and my husband got to gloat for an entire week about how he knew what was happening and I didn't. ha ha :) I ordered a copy of this book today....so soon I will have another fresh new Sookie book arriving on my doorstep to grace my keeper shelf. I'm sure once hubby sees me re-reading the first book he will want to join in and revisit Bon Temps too.

For more information on the author and her books, check out her website: http://charlaineharris.com/

**I voluntarily received an advanced readers copy of this book from Berkley Publishing via NetGalley. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.**






( )

The nice thing is this is the complete collection of short stories, but the downside is there is nothing new in here at all if you were a hardcore fan and read every anthology that had Sookie stories in them. Even saying that it was nice to read them all again. Each story does have a small intro and she does give a bit of heads up of when she tipped her hand for the Soookie/Sam relationship. If you haven’t read the books then this isn’t a good place to start since there will be tons of spoilers but it was a nice trip down memory lane with a favorite read.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley ( )

It was a nice revisit to many of the beloved characters from the Stackhouse series. Obviously some are better than others but overall a nice, quick read. ( )