ShaunOK 'Book Addict'

Hmm. I am not a massive fan of short stories. I always find that they are either lacking in detail or story development which is to be expected, or that they are too short (ie. the story just gets good but then it's over). I love Sookie Stackhouse however so I did enjoy these stories however they weren't anything special.

Annoyingly I took this out of the library a few weeks ago and checked online to see where the short stories fitted into the series chronologically. I then put the book down and forgot about it and then when I began reading Definitely Dead and Sookie talked about her dead cousin I thought I had missed a book. It was then that I remembered this collection of stories however I waited until reading Definitely Dead before reading this collection.

The first story is Fairy Dust and is about the fairy triplets Claude, Claudine and Claudette. This story has Sookie trying to find out who killed one of the triplets. To be honest this was one of the weaker short stories. It doesn't add nothing to the series and it wasn't as fun to read as the main books are. And at around just over 30 pages long, hardly anything happens.

Dracula Night is about a party at Fangtasia celebrating Dracula and Eric is convinced that Dracula will put in an appearance at his nightclub this year. He even goes to the trouble and expense of sourcing 'The Royalty', a blood drink with artificial and real (from Royals) blood. Does Dracula make an appearance? You will have to read to find out. I thought this one was a good enough read and I love anything with Sookie and Eric together so this was one of my favourites from the collection.

One Word Answer is the short story in which Sookie finds out about Hadley. It is recommended that you read this before Definitely Dead and as it is only short I feel this should be a Prologue in future publications of Definitely Dead or at the very least a short paragraph in future publications warning readers that it would be a good idea to read this short story for the background of what Definitely Dead is about. I thought this one was a good read but I knew most of what happened from the recap in Definitely Dead so perhaps it would have been better had I read it first.

Lucky is about Sookie and Amelia on the hunt to find out who is sabotaging the town's insurance agents. I didn't really enjoy this one and it doesn't really add anything to the story so can be read as a standalone. And finally Gift Wrap I just skimmed through as I didn't want to ruin any parts of future books so I might return to this in the future when I am further along with the series.

Overall a bit disappointed with this but there is only so much an author can do with 30 or so pages for a short story. Unless you are collecting everything to do with Sookie/True Blood I would say just check out your local library for this one. Saving yourself some £/$ and saving the libraries at the same time!