Title: The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires
Author: Grady Hendrix
Publisher: Quirk books
Page Count: 400
Publication Date: 2020
Category/Genre: Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, Thriller, Horror, Vampires
Good Reads Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.89)
My Rating: ★★★★☆(3.8)
Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias meet Dracula in this Southern-flavored supernatural thriller set in the ’90s about a women’s book club that must protect its suburban community from a mysterious and handsome stranger who turns out to be a blood-sucking fiend.
Patricia Campbell had always planned for a big life, but after giving up her career as a nurse to marry an ambitious doctor and become a mother, Patricia’s life has never felt smaller. The days are long, her kids are ungrateful, her husband is distant, and her to-do list is never really done. The one thing she has to look forward to is her book club, a group of Charleston mothers united only by their love for true-crime and suspenseful fiction. In these meetings, they’re more likely to discuss the FBI’s recent siege of Waco as much as the ups and downs of marriage and motherhood.
But when an artistic and sensitive stranger moves into the neighborhood, the book club’s meetings turn into speculation about the newcomer. Patricia is initially attracted to him, but when some local children go missing, she starts to suspect the newcomer is involved. She begins her own investigation, assuming that he’s a Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy. What she uncovers is far more terrifying, and soon she–and her book club–are the only people standing between the monster they’ve invited into their homes and their unsuspecting community.
The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires is a dark, funny, gory book that deals with the whole bored housewife troupe taking on a vampire.
“We’re a book club,” Maryellen said. “What are we supposed to do? Read him to death? Use strong language?”
Instead of being corny, as I slightly expected, it really worked in the whole patronizing aspect of what many housewives deal with along with some really strong and anxiety-ridden gaslighting. But fear not my friends, coz these women have some serious claws and teeth.
This was a really fast and fun read that also paid homage to the women that run the show day in and day out from home, behind the scenes and without always getting credit or respect they deserve.
And how not even a monster would want to go up against them if it came down to it.
