At a Glance

Title: The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires

Author: Grady Hendrix

Published: April 7, 2020 by Quirk Books

Page: 400

Genre: Horror, Fantasy, Fiction

Goodreads Rating: 4.09 out of 5

My Rating: ★★★★

Synopsis

My Thoughts

When I first read about this book, I was not about it. It’s been years since I read a vampire book and while I love a book about magic and witches, vampires aren’t really my thing. Except I read some rave reviews about the book that mentioned how ridiculous this book was and I decided, why not?! Let me just say, this was not what I expected.

Patricia and her bookclub read murder mysteries. They’re experts on Ted Bundy, Manson, and love In Cold Blood. What starts as a bookclub, quickly turns these ladies in the best friends, bonded by the love of a good crime book. Their lack of substance besides taking care of their families and being the ‘perfect’ Southern wife, leave them wanting more out of their quite and polite lives. When a new neighbor, James,  moves into their pristine neighborhood Patricia invites him into their bookclub. But she may have just invited him to more than just bookclub by accident. When children in the area start to go missing, getting sick, and starting to die; Patricia begins to realize what she invited not just into her families lives, but the lives of the entire town.

This is not your typical Vampire story and it’s actually hard to put into words exactly how this book left me feeling. I enjoyed that this story was more about the friendship the women in the book club develop and that the characters are witty with plenty of ‘haha’ moments. Since the book takes place in the 80’s and 90’s, I immediate thought it would be more ‘campy’, like so many of the horror movies at that time were. Instead there is depth within this book that explores the struggles of women during this time. The amount of gaslighting, patronization, and misogyny from the men in this book boiled my blood. There were points where I straight up had to take a moment and remember this is a book, there is no need to shout. Most of the men in the book relieve on their wives to do everything within the home and for the kids, and yet they hardly seem to know what goes on in their own neighborhoods. Too blind to see past the ‘boy’s club’, there wasn’t a single man we met in this book that respected their wives or thought of them as anything more than a housewife.

Regardless all the women in this story are bad-asses. Not in your typical not scared of anything, superhero way though. Instead it’s in the way they care for their families, that they’ll do anything to stand up for them even if that means facing a vampire that is 400 years old.

I loved this book. It was the perfect book to get me out a reading rut. It’s funny, quirky, and out of the box. It has depth, wit, and tackles a few deeper issues such as domestic abuse. I’m hoping this becomes a series because I would love to be a member of this book club.

This book is out now, get it HERE!

I hope you enjoyed my thoughts on The Southern Book Clubs Guide to Slaying Vampires.  If you liked this review please let me know either by commenting below or by visiting my instagram @speakingof_books. 

About the Author

New York Times bestselling author Grady Hendrix has written about the confederate flag for Playboy magazine, covered machine gun collector conventions, and scripted award shows for Chinese television. His novels include HORRORSTÖR about a haunted IKEA, MY BEST FRIEND’S EXORCISM, which is basically “Beaches” meets “The Exorcist”, WE SOLD OUR SOULS, a heavy metal horror epic, and THE SOUTHERN BOOK CLUB’S GUIDE TO SLAYING VAMPIRES. He’s also the author of PAPERBACKS FROM HELL, an award-winning history of the horror paperback boom of the Seventies and Eighties. He wrote the screenplay for, MOHAWK, a horror flick about the War of 1812, and SATANIC PANIC about a pizza delivery woman fighting rich Satanists

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