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The Sookie Stackhouse Companion
by
Charlaine Harris
It is part of the The Southern Vampire Mysteries #15, Sookie Stackhouse #10.5 series and is a paranormal fantasy in Hardcover edition that was published by Ace Hardcover on August 30, 2011 and has 461 pages.
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Other books in this series include [books_series]
Other books by this author which I have reviewed include Night's Edge, Death's Excellent Vacation, Must Love Hellhounds, Dead Reckoning, Bite, A Secret Rage, Home Improvement: Undead Edition, Deadlocked, An Apple for the Creature, Dead Ever After, Games Creatures Play, After Dead: What Came Next in the World of Sookie Stackhouse, Indigo, Night Shift, Sleep Like a Baby, The Pretenders, A Longer Fall, An Easy Death, The Russian Cage, Small Kingdoms and Other Stories, Real Murders, A Bone to Pick, Three Bedrooms, One Corpse, Dead Until Dark, The Julius House, Dead Over Heels, A Fool and His Honey, Shakespeare’s Landlord, Last Scene Alive, Shakespeare’s Champion, Poppy Done to Death, Shakespeare’s Christmas, Shakespeare’s Trollop, Shakespeare's Counselor
The Sookie Stackhouse Companion won the 2012 Macavity Award for Best Mystery-Related Nonfiction and the Anthony Award for Best Critical Non-Fiction. It was also nominated for the Agatha Award for Best Nonfiction in 2011.
Series:
Sookie Stackhouse, 10.5
The Southern Vampire Mysteries, 15
“Small Town Wedding” is a short story in the Sookie Stackhouse series and, per Charlaine Harris, falls between Dead in the Family, 10, and Dead Reckoning, 11, making it 10.5. If you’re interested, there is a chronological listing of the Sookie Stackhouse books at KD Did It Takes on Books.
My Take
The short story, “Small Town Wedding”, was sweet. Family coming together, backing each other up. I loved the party after the wedding! I did not figure out how Sookie knew to head down to the pound.
Ooh, Quinn meets his “doom”! LOL, and so does Sarah Newlin…yes!
That takes care of the first 79 pages. After that, there’s a huge chunk devoted to providing readers with a timeline of every Sookie Stackhouse book in the series, and it reads like an outline in summary format. Harris also provides a timeline for the short stories, although I still disagree about the chronology for “If I Had a Hammer”. I know, the cheek of me! It’s just that it wasn’t until Dead Ever After, 13, that Tara started talking about needing to expand the house.
Oh, man, then there are the recipes!! Yummy!!
Questions from her fan club are answered. There’s a guide to the characters in each story and a visit with Alan Bell who created the television series True Blood based on the Sookie Stackhouse series.
On the whole, I enjoyed the short story, and the majority of this is ideal for the Sookie Stackhouse fan who wants a bible of the series.
The Short Story, “Small Town Wedding”
Sookie Stackhouse is heading out of town to Wright, Texas, with Sam Merlotte to go to his brother’s, Craig‘s, wedding to Deidra Lisle. (His sister Mindy is already married to Doke Ballinger and they have two kids: Mason and Bonnie.)
It’s already fraught as the shifters came out a short time ago, and Don shot Bernie, Sam’s mom, when she changed in front of him, and now Deidra’s parents have put off the wedding several times, worried about her marrying an animal!
But, hey, the townspeople have known the Merlottes for years, what could happen?
Characters include:
Eric Northman is her boyfriend; Bill Compton is her vampire neighbor still recovering from the silver poisoning. Victor Madden is Eric’s boss. Tara is her pregnant friend and not due for three more months. Cousin Claude and Great-Uncle Dermot plan to stay at Claude’s house while she’s gone. Sam is dating Jannalyn, the enforcer for the Shreveport pack, but Sam had invited Sookie before he started dating Jannalyn. Thank god!
In Wright
Jim Collins is the Merlottes’ miserable neighbor. Quinn is a weretiger whom Sookie once dated. He’s with Trish Pulaski and Togo Olympio, worried about Sookie. Sister Mendoza and Rafe are sheriff’s deputies in Wright and Sam’s friends. Pastor Bart Arrowsmith has issues with which he’ll need to deal; Nathan Arrowsmith is his son, the one holding the stink bomb. Jared Lisle is Deidra’s brother in the service; he’ll take a stand with them around the church. Porter Carpenter is one of the unhelpful cops.
More twoeys who show up to help include:
Brenda Sue, a trauma nurse; Luna Garza; and, Tijgerin, a weretigress with whom Quinn mates.
Sarah Newlin from the Fellowship of the Sun church organized the riot; and gets herself arrested after she shoots Jim Collins, her cohort in crime.
The Cover and Title
The cover is, as usual, fun with Sam the collie hanging his head out the window of a red truck which is silhouetted against a sparkly full moon while Sookie drives, glancing back in fear at the bats flying around them.
The title is what it is: The Sookie Stackhouse Companion as it indexes the entire series.
