Hi everyone! The last person you'd expect to see over in this forum, right? (For those who don't know me from the games, I detest paranormal themes. Detest. Until someone strongly suggested I watch HBO's True Blood. Which I did. The men were hot. I watched all 5 seasons in 5 weeks.) 

I have a question...

I'm told that the TV show veers off from the books and basically Alan Ball takes the TV show on a little cinematic fan fic adventure. Which is cool. But at what book does the storyline change? I started reading book 1 and am about halfway through and it's just a repeat of the show and I'm bored. I want to jump to where the show veered off. Anyone know? Thanks!

BTW, I thought, well maybe I like vampires so I got the new Jeaniene Frost book from the library. Detest. I think I just like True Blood/ Sookie.

It changed after book one.  I think he tried his best to follow it in the first books for the first season but even then he changed things.  Lafayette doesn't make it to the end of one of the first few books, I don't remember Tara's mom being in the books at all, and there is no baby vamp Jessica in the books either.  I'm pretty sure he went off the plot for the majority of season 2 but its been so long since I read book 2 I can't be for sure.  Most of book one was the same as the show but I know I sat there through season 2 going oh that did not happen!  I'm not sure I'd skip any of the books if you can chugg through them because things are changed and he adds alot so you don't want to miss key plot points in the series.   

I didn't like Frost books either. But if you like Sookie (I didn't watch the show, just read the books) you will probably like Teri Garey's books.

Alan Ball said in the very beginning that he had to flesh out the series because otherwise Anna Paquin would have had parts in virtually every scene, which just wasn't feasible.  True Blood has made major characters out of people who were only minor players in the books - Lafayette, Tara, Mary Ann, to name a few - and created some completely new ones - such as Jessica, and Jason's hippy girlfriend (I don't even remember her name).  Then Ball added lots of alternate storylines that just don't exist in the written series.  (I mean seriously, Bill becomes the King of Lousiana??)  Only at the very beginning of the series does True Blood really resemble the Sookie Stackhouse series.  I finally had to just acknowledge to myself that True Blood is not a retelling of the Sookie series before I could enjoy True Blood for its own sake because initially it bothered me terribly to see True Blood veer so completely away from the Sookie series.  I now like to watch True Blood, but I think the written series is much, much better.