So, as you may have gathered, I am a bit of a reader. (And of female-authored books, no less! I promise there will be a man-written book on my list by September, if I have to re-read one of my James Ellroys or Sebastian Faulks to get it there!) And as a reader—and a woman, as I alluded to in the bracketed sentence above—I appreciate a well-plotted love story. It's been a pleasant surprise to find a good love story in the middle of a series of books about a telepathic barmaid in Louisiana.

I read Charlaine Harris's All Together Dead on Saturday, and as I read I realized that in between the mind reading and the blood-giving and the vampire machinations, Harris is telling one hell of a love story between Sookie, the aforementioned telepathic barmaid, and Eric, the hot Viking vampire. From the first book, readers knew there was something there, and here we are in book six still waiting for the big payoff. But unlike the will-they-won't-they dance they do on TV, Harris gives readers just enough that we feel like the story is progressing and that the characters are moving towards one hell of a romance.

I wonder if the HBO series is going to mess with that to play up Sookie's relationship with Bill. I wonder if Eric will even see the light of day (no pun intended) in the first season, beyond maybe a trip to Fangtasia. And most of all, I wonder when True Blood will air. Since I burned through this book and have to wait a year for the next one, I can't fricken wait.