Charlaine Harris: Dead Until Dark (***)

Written by Charlaine Harris Dead Until Dark is a modern fantasy book about supernatural creatures and humans. Sookie Stackhouse is the main character of this book and she has a 'disability' of hearing people's thoughts. There's also some romance and our co-star for Sookie is Bill Compton, a few hundred years old vampire that has returned to his roots.

In my opinion, there's a lot of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight influence in this book. There is a mind-reader and vampires, of course, but instead of a brooding vampire unable to hear the girl's thoughts it's the somewhat crybaby-waitress-girl unable to hear the brooding vampire's thoughts.

It took me some time to get interested in reading the story, but I think the reason for that is because I have seen the TV series already. While not all the happenings are the same in the book, there's a lot of things that didn't surprise me as I read. What disappointed me was the quickness of the book's climax. It was so near the end I was sure that the crime case in the story wouldn't be solved at all and when it did get solved it lasted only a few pages at most.

Anne Fortier: Juliet (***)

Written by Anne Fortier Juliet is a fictional romance book about modern Juliet of Shakespeare's star-crossed lover story Romeo and Juliet.

The story is in my opinion, in the beginning very slow-paced or perhaps rather nothing exciting happens for quite a long time. The main character Julia Jacobs (or Giulietta Tolomein) is a rather self-centered, self-pitying and shallow. First impression is extremely important, when reading a book and to be perfectly honest Julia didn't exactly impress me, which almost caused me to abandon the book before I had even turned 50 pages.

I prevailed and was rather glad that I crawled through the beginning, because the phase picks up after Julia gets her greedy hands in her mother's treasure box.

The story also tells about 14th century Siena and two lovers: Giulietta and Romeo. It is rather appealing that in one chapter you find yourself in modern Italy and next you're in a historical tragic story.

I would most definitely recommend this to almost everybody, though if you can't stand weak characters the beginning might be a little bit of a torture to you. The book is practicially a brick, so definitely not some light reading.

Book started: 29th of May
Book finished: 2nd of June