The Radleys

(SPOILER ALERT)

So I skipped a week, because I was traumatized by the newest Charlaine Harris book, Dead Reckoning. I LOVE Ms Charlaine, I LOVE Sookie Stackhouse, and I LOVE the first seven or eight books in the series. This one is book 11. I didn't love it. I didn't hate it exactly, but I did think that Ms Charlaine might be watching a bit too much True Blood. I liked Eric better when he was a flirtatious asshole. Now he's just an asshole. And I did hate the scene where Alcide turned up in Sookie's bed. I simply didn't believe that the character Ms Charlaine created in the earlier books would do that. Sorry. It also bugged me that never once did a shifter shift into their animal form, and never once did a vampire bite anyone. The fairies got a little busy, but other than that it was the most normal paranormal fiction that I could imagine. It wasn't a bad book, but I didn't love it.

I did, however, love The Radleys by Matt Haig. In this book a family of four, parents married 17 years with two teenage kids, have something cataclysmic happen. The book explores how they each deal with it, how they are changed by it, and how they come to grips with their new reality. It's a delicate character study, with a truth that resonated for me. I found the wife, Helen, especially heartbreaking as she and her husband cope with the distance that's grown between them. Oh, and they're all vampires. 'Nuff said. It's a quick read, a fun read, a must-read.