Dead Until Dark, by Charlaine Harris

Poorly written, and bears some uncanny resemblance to the Twilight series, even down to the overprotective-bordering-on-controlling boyfriend. But for now, having read this book and currently halfway through the sequel, "Living Dead in Dallas", I like it. It's an easy read. Just turn off that part of your brain that says "hey, that contradicts what was written before. HEY MODERN SOCIETY WOULD NEVER ACCEPT THAT!". That's referring to the fact that vampires have "come out of the coffin" and formed some sort of weird truce with humanity. Humans pretend the vamps are really infected with a virus that makes them allergic to sunlight, silver, and garlic. Vamps who would like to become "mainstream" drink synthetic blood and file taxes and shit. However, they still think of humans as lower forms of life.....like cows. I think that the humans would pick up on that and annihilate the suckers (haha!), seeing as how no matter how super-human you are and manipulative of the human brain at night, in the daytime you are a dead body stuffed in a casket, totally defenseless if someone wants to, say, set you on fire.

Also (!) Vampire blood has healing powers and gives you energy and makes you pretty and all kinds of awesomeness, and although they mention in the book that some people trap and drain vampires, I think a LOT more people would be doing that in real life, until vamps were extinct. Even if you don't take the blood, it's easy to sell and very expensive, so it would feed whatever addiction you DO have, so imagine all the meth heads in the world realizing that they are one dead vampire away from enough crack to take a bath in.

OOH, I just found out via Wikipedia that this lady lives 2 hours from my house. This means that, theoretically, I could have show up at her house and tell her everything that's wrong with this series. HAHAH just read that she's a former weightlifter and karate student. I'M SORRY MRS. HARRIS. PLEASE DO NOT KICK MY ASS.

Quick synopsis of the book: Sookie Stackhouse: waitress and psychic, meets Bill Compton: vampire trying to mainstream (become a regular part of society). There are some murders in Sookie's little town, which are alternately blamed on her brother and then Bill. It's not really a mystery in that Sookie doesn't go all Nancy Drew, looking for clues and stuff, but she does help find the killer, and in the process gets a totally selfish and overbearing dead boyfriend in the process.

Another problem with the book: Sookie gets mad when her coworker doesn't want Sookie to watch her kids if her boyfriend will be present. My thoughts on this: SOOKIE HE IS A FUCKING VAMPIRE WHO LIVES ON HUMAN BLOOD. WHAT MOTHER WOULD BE OKAY WITH THAT???? Eventually, though, the mom is okay with that. WELCOME TO THE MOST RETARDED TOWN IN LOUISIANA.