Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris

So, Sookie doesn't actually have sex with anyone in this book. I think I'm a little disappointed.

This was a reread, and I've read this series all out of order, and enjoy them, while forgetting them entirely in between reads. But when I came into this one, and realized at the end that Sookie isn't actually with anyone in this book, I was a little...confounded.

No less than, wait, let's me count, four, five, no, six guys have the hots for her in this one, but she's not actually with any of them. She doesn't sleep with any of them. Although there are some smoochies. And leg-licking. Huh.

That's not what I remember about these books.

I have an odd relationship to this series, in that I started with the next book in the series, number six, and have bounced around like a ping pong ball. Now that I've read most of the first six or seven, I guess I now have a wider canvas to slot in where, exactly, this one comes in the overall scope of things.

And that's where it comes in. Her brother is struggling with his new circumstances, Sookie is sitting on a windfall after taking care of Eric in the previous book (one I've still never read), and boy, is she going to need it.

I do appreciate that grounding of these books, so over the top in other ways, in real concerns, like health insurance and missing work. Although, after she'd just said that she could have paid her hospital bills herself, although they had been paid by another party, it did strain credulity a bit that she was then worried about missing a single shift of work. If you could have paid your hospital bills on the spot, you can take a couple of days off of work on that same money.

At any rate, someone is taking potshots at Bon Temps shifters. And that someone seems to be gunning for Sookie as well. And she is circled by Bill, and Eric, and Alcide, and Sam, and Calvin, and...who was the sixth? I swear I counted six. Oh, wait, Quinn. Right!

So yeah. This is a fine entry in a series I enjoy but am not that attached to. But filled with sexual tension rather than actual sexytimes.