BOOK REVIEW: The Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Mystery Series (BONUS: True Blood Rant) 

I will never forgive HBO for not giving us the explosion at the vampire hotel. That's Book 7, right? And Eric and Sookie's real relationship.

I’d love you to make a spoiler(y) video going through the major differences between the books and the show. Though you’re right the last...like 9 are so vastly vastly different. Maybe just a review for each book then??

Ive seen all episodes of true blood (3times) and my friend has read all the books, we often sit for hours discussing the differences, and how much we both enjoyed our journey with Sookie.

I just finished the books this week. Nobody I know has read them so I appreciate your review. I also LOVED the ending.

I watched True Blood initially while it was airing and wound up reading the first book back in... 2010. Super disappointed in how the show ended and how Sookie and Eric's characters were handled lol. But I've been thinking about giving the whole book series another go, so I was excited to see your review on them!

I agree completely that the makers of the TV show dropped the ball after season four. I understand taking creative licence, as well as fabricating storylines for the side characters, but as you said, after season 4, nothing in the books really came through in the show. I'll never forgive them for not having Sookie and Eric in a monogamist relationship, because you know those actors would have done a great job, there were also major plot points they just skipped right over. The vampire hierarchy, the fae war, Sookie's relationship with Quinn, and about a dozen other things, all could have provided excellent entertainment, but instead, we got a vampire religion, vampire concentration camps and a vampire zombie disease. I could say more but this is getting really long. It's nice to hear someone shares my views though, no one in my life has read these book, or knows my outrage lol.

just bought the whole series to binge read because of this video! loved the HBO show but have heard that the novels are better.

I remember when I read After Dead, I couldn't remember who a bunch of the characters mentioned were. 😅

Never read the books watched this to see the difference between them but i have to say and alot of people will disagree the show as a show was good for the first few season and then ok for the rest honestly i wish i we could have seen more about godric he was a interesting character.

Great video! Like, scribed, and commented! I know I'm late to the series but I just finished the show the other day. I cried during the episode where Jess and hoyt get hitched. Not only cause I'm a sap for weddings, but because I was thinking about how disappointing this whole final season was. And you're BASED that at least GoT didn't have the endings to stray from. I'd really love to see some spoiler content of the books!! P.s frickin spooky shuda hit bill with her light ball but then he turns into a human and they're like wtf then her gramps comes out and is like cause you used it with love or something you turned him into a human instead of killing him and now yall and grow old together 😭 also they did my boy alcide so dirty

Great review! Loved the book series - one of my favorites. I completely agree with you about the show. I read the books first and kept hoping the show would go back to its source material. I followed the show all the way to the end - mainly to watch Alexander Skarsgard. 😂❤

Such a wonderful review of the book series, over the years I’ve only read book one but I’ve just bought the book series 1-10 so looking forward to that, also currently watching the tv series

Great video. I’m back to rereading the first one on up to Book #8. I had stopped a few years back. Yes, there are many characters in the Series, and that’s why I love this Series. The Mystery, Characters, and Romance was very good. May I ask where you found your hardcovers of Sookie? It’s hard to find the first couple of books in hardcover? So I was just curious? Yes, I’m reading Book 1 and love it all over again. I thought I would let you know also that in 2017 Charlaine Harris released a book called The Complete Sookie Stackhouse Stories. There might be stories that are already in your novellas, but you will love the Stories, the first story is called Farie Dust I believe, Playing Possum, and Dracula Night. There are more in there also. The author has a new introduction that she writes before the stories start. At the beginning of each story, she will note the circumstances that happened, when it did, and she tells you the title of the book that these events happened after.

I've been binge watching the show and more and more see commets about after season 4 everything went donwnhill. Im just watching for eric and sookie but now that i know that they are not together after that im not really in the mood to keep watching. Im intrigued to reed the books just for more erick and sookie content. Do you think is worth it?

2 years late but.. I watched the show and loved it, really want to try and get into the books

I saw the show 1st...between s3 & s4 I began reading the novels. I kept watching the show even though I would say our host is spot on saying that HBO definitely trashed the story by the time they were done with it...and again, like our host said in the video they(HBO)had all of the source material and there was no reason to wreck the story. In the end I enjoy both the novels and HBO series with the novels scoring 4.5/5 bottles of True Blood and the HBO scoring a 2.5/5 bottles of True Blood. They're both good...but the novels tell a great(in my mind)story, open an interesting, new door in vampire fiction...and the HBO series is fun and funny, well written, shot beautifully and some characters who exist solely in the tv series or who have been fleshed out just for the series are so good that they make the show better for their existence.

I'm late to the party on this, but I found these books well before the show became a thing because I wanted to read more vampire books after Twilight. I loved the series and kept up with it as it released. I stopped watching the show pretty early because of how much the show deviated from the books. I also kind of hated the show for making everything over sexualized. Like I get that Sookie isn't the only one having sex, but I would have preferred to not see a bunch of random background characters having sex. Maybe I should re-read this series again sometime. I think part of what I disliked about the ending of the final book was that I was very much #TeamEric throughout the series, though I did like other characters. I was surprised at the decision for who she'd end up with, but in the end I think you were right and that it made the most sense given the foundation laid out. Just wish we'd seen them together romantically more throughout the series. I don't recall if I read any of the short stories, though I may have. This was a nice spoiler free review!

So I've been listening to the audiobooks this past month, I think I have 3 left. I watched the series while it was still running on tv. But I gotta say I prefer the characters in the book than the tv series. Though the book is kinda messy I still enjoy it and its a super fast read/listen.

My mom bought me books 1, 2 and 4 at a yard sale and I've been DESPERATE to get my hands on the whole series since i read them almost 15 years ago but the price Amazon wants pains me

Book 4 was the best

I heard hbo is doing a reboot of true blood if they do i hope they follow the book

Enjoyed the book series. The HBO series really annoyed me. They change the focus of the stories to amp up the sex A LOT and it happens at the cost of the murder mystery part. And it becomes really weird that Sookie - who is the one person uniquely suited to possible solve the murders - is doing NOTHING to try and figure it out. Eventually her aunt tells her to investigate and still she does very little. In the books, as I recall, we get a better feeling as to why it is not so easy to just read peoples mind and point at the killer. But the HBO series is way to busy with sideplots and sex to do so. And that kinda makes Sookie seem dumb, which I don't get from the books at all. On the contrary. So I guess they amped up the stuff that did not interest me and almost cut out the things that did. So i did not care for the HBO series and did not finish it.

I LOVED the first season and then it was ok up to season 3 but from season 4 to 7 watching felt like a chore, I'm heartbroken :(

I've never seen the show OR read the books, but I am definitely not a stranger to books being adapted into TV shows. And it isn't HBO that does this either. Other networks have done it before too. Like SYFY Channel for example. Back in 2016 they started adapting a trilogy of novels that I love into a five season live action series. The trilogy is The Magicians Trilogy by Lev Grossman. I dropped off after the first six or seven episodes because it felt like they took the premise of Grossman's novels and ran with it in their own direction and it was not as far off from the novels as you're talking about here, but still pretty far off. Lol. I just feel like most of the time TV networks and movie studios don't really know what to do with this material and so they either hire someone to produce it, or they greenlight a producer's vision for it, but then interfere with that vision without understanding that their changes take away from the source material, or focus on the wrong thing from the source material. Comic book shows do that too. Like Arrow for example. Those first two seasons could easily have been two seasons of a Batman series, and you wouldn't've known the difference because the studio, and the people who developed the show, were so focused on The Dark Knight Trilogy that I think they forgot that Green Arrow isn't Batman. They don't have the same journey and they're very different characters.

See I loved True Blood (although some story lines were annoying and thin) and the books were toooo boring for me.

I hated 99% of this show. Tara's character was way too much, the fairy thing wasn't nearly what it could've been, Pam wasn't girly, where's the werepanthers? Godric's character, Eric's maker, Sookie's fairy family, the entire show was horrible for me because i made the mistake of reading the books first. The only thing i like was Alexander Skarsgard but then they cut his hair. I'll stick to books and sell my tv.