The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

Overall it was a good book. Took me only a few days to read which means it kept my attention. But I just can’t decide if I really enjoyed it or was just slight curious what was going to happen. There were some inconsistencies, there was more detail than there needed to be, and yet I don’t know if changing those would help. It’s definitely worth reading, but also I can foresee some people finding it just too hard to finish.3.5 stars

Great book

I’m new to pleasure reading. This book was AMAZING! Couldn’t put it down. If I wasn’t in a place to sit down and read , I’d listen to the audio version in my car. Cannot wait to read more from this author!

I really had doubts midway in the book but I kept pushing through, ironically for a Crimes and Clues book club. I'm so glad I did.The heart shows through again with this author's writing, and by the end, I felt tears on my face.I will say part of the gore got to me in this book, but it wouldn't have been the same without it.Thanks for continuing to write great stories, Grady Hendrix, and thanks for adding to our book club

Loved this book. Grady Hendrix at his fun/horror best.I originally listened on audio, but now i have one for my shelves.In perfect condition.

Starts out light and funny, and quickly becomes a book with big meaning. So many things are touched on here. Women being disregarded by their husbands, Black people being unseen as human beings with real lives...it's a lot, but it's done beautifully. Just read it!

Great story, but SPOILERS, didn't Patricia cosign James Hariss' bank account in the beginning, so wouldn't she have access to all of his money?? This really bothered me for some reason but overall the story was unique and well told. I really enjoyed it.

Hendrix does a masterful job in this book. This has become one of my favorites. Like so many others, I was infuriated with how apathetic some of the characters were. That inertness is part of the horror. How the protagonist is isolated, how she questions whats real, is part of the horror. Its a rather potent story about social class, sexism, and racism.

This book was amazing! Some of the subject matter was difficult for me to read but wasn't senseless and furthered the story. My Nana recently passed and reading her name Patricia over and over again for such a strong female character was very meaningful to me. Much like my own southern Nana Patricia is the kind of character you just love. And you love her for being so strong. I read this in about 3 days. It's a page turner!

Wow. I can’t believe I sat on this book for so long. This was just the vampire fix I needed, and it’s a unique southern horror.I LOVED the characters. Most of the book focuses on Patricia but the other women in the book club have just enough to feel rounded enough to me. I know some other reviews complained that there wasn’t enough to make them interesting, but I disagree.As an NC born and raised, I loved the setting. It felt like home, despite being set in SC. Also, the writing was wonderful. I cannot believe a male author captured so well what it’s like being a stay at home mom with kids who are in a book club. That’s me right now and so many times I smiled and laughed at how accurate their conversations were during book club.If you like great characters, an interesting and somewhat new spin on a vampire, and Southern horror, this is for you. But make sure you hang in the first 60 pages. The author really sets up the characters first which pays off.

Did not want to put this book down.All I want is to be entertained and this delivered.This is worth another read sometime in the future.

Let me start by saying that I really ended up liking this book. However, I was definitely expecting it to be a humorous and light-hearted vampire hunting novel by gentle Southern belles. While I could not stop reading, you need to be prepared that it is actually deeply dark, violent, lonely, and terrifying. If you are looking for fun vampire camp, this is NOT it. But if you are prepared for a well-written story of resilience in the face of evil, this is it.

*Minor Spoilers*This is my third Grady Hendrix novel, and I really liked it, but I didn't love it exactly. It wasn't really what I was expecting, although that is just me. I found the story very engaging and I liked the varying characters. As someone who grew up in the 80's & 90's, I would've been the same age as Korey at the time this takes place, I think it was a pretty accurate portayal of how times were for women, especially in the South, particularly for housewives. The book was more about Patricia, her family, and the other ladies in the book club than about vampires. I was expecting something a little spicier between Patricia & James, but that is not at all what we get. I was not expecting to read about child abuse or SA, but we do get that. The horror and gore is definitely there, but only in a few parts of the novel. Overall, I am glad I read this and appreciate that it is a very original take on a vampire story.

I first became aware of Grady Hendrix a number of years ago, when he gave his Paperbacks from Hell presentation at a Writer's Retreat I attended, and the man was funny. Downright hysterical. I don't remember the last time I laughed so hard. So naturally, I assumed his books would be just as funny. So on my next trip to the bookstore, I grabbed a copy of Horrorstor... And hated it. The book just wasn't funny. No, wait... I take that back. There were maybe two funny lines in the entire book, and they occurred very early on in the book. Like maybe Chapter 1. Possibly Chapter 2. The rest was a slog with a bunch of very unlikable characters. I wanted to give the author another chance, though. I mean, everyone is entitled to have an off day (off book), so it was with some reluctance that I picked up The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires. It was described as Steel Magnolias meets Dracula, and I like both of those, and while it didn't WOW! me, I did end up enjoying it more than my previous excursion into Hendrix Country.The premise is nothing new: handsome stranger (James Harris), who is not who or what he claims to be, worms his way into the lives of a close-knit community, while on the outskirts of town, children are either disppearing or committing suicide. The events happen to coincide with each other, but is he responsible? Patricia Campbell eventually stumbles onto the man's secret and takes it to her book club, and it's up to them to put an end to his reign of terror. But it's not as simple as it sounds because Patricia can't come right out and say the man is a vampire. Who would believe here? They don't even want to believe her when she accuses the man of being a child molester and a drug pusher who's selling drugs to children. It takes her three years to finally gather enough evidence, but even then they're reluctant to believe her because Mr. Harris has so firmly ingrained within their circle as an upstanding citizen, best friend and business partner to their husbands, and becomes idolized by their children. And as long as he doesn't hurt those within the community, that he continues to target the "poor" part of town, they're content to look the other way. But Patricia won't let it rest, and it's only when he attacks one of the book club members and sets his sights on Patricia's children that they decide something needs to be done.While the book isn't as funny as I wanted it to be after seeing Hendrix's presentation, it does have its moments that had me chuckling, and it was 100x better than Horrorstor. There's a large cast of characters you need to keep track of, not all of which are likeable, but if feel like Hendrix drew a line on the floor and told all the good characters need to be on one side, and the bad characters on the other, and after everyone had chosen their sides, it's pretty much guys vs girls, which pretty much reflects the southern society of the time. I did find the pacing to be inconsistent. The book starts of strong, but about halfway through, it flatlines, at least for me (at this point I almost put the book aside), and doesn't pick up again until you're about three-quarters of the way through, at which point it moves like an express train toward the climax. Would I recommend it? If you only read "serious" horror, I don't think this is the book for you, but if you don't mind your horror on the light side with a smattering of humor, it's definitely worth checking out. 4/5 starsBut now I need a tie breaker. Which Hendrix book should I read next? Hmmmm...

Hey there book lovers! It is your old pal, Ninetoes, coming at you with a review of Grady Hendrix’s The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. I got my thinking cap on, coffee in my system, so let’s do this!I love vampires, the kind of vampires that will rip your head off to suck the bloody stump and not the sparkly ones. I am always on the hunt for a new take on the vampire novel, and that is exactly what I got with The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires.Patricia is a member of a book club in Mt. Pleasant, SC. The book starts where she is a bundle of nerves because she is next to do a presentation for the book club, and she never read the book. A million reasons came up as to why she did not read it. When she falters with her presentation, she finds that she is not the only one who did not read it. The leader of the group is upset, and the group shuffles out. In the parking area, Patricia comes across a group of women who are reading a true crime book instead. The kind you find at the supermarket with pictures in the middle. They form their own club, and they are off to the races.In the meantime, Patricia is attacked by an elderly neighbor, who bites a chunk out of her ear. The neighbor dies and Patricia does the thing most southern ladies do…she bakes a pie to bring to the nephew. When she delivers the pie, she finds the nephew in a sorry state, to the point that she thinks he is having a heart attack. Her nursing instincts take over and she “saves” him. This starts a journey that Patricia will never forget.Her new neighbor is different. Strange things start happening on the outskirts of town. Young children disappear or kill themselves. Her mother-in-law is killed by a swarm of rats. And Patricia starts to feel like she is slowly losing her mind.Slowly the truth begins to come out. It takes all Patricia has to convince her friends of what is really going on. The question is can a group of middle-aged ladies who belong to a book club stop the evil that is menacing their town?This book rocks! Grady Hendrix brought me back to a time in my life when I lived in North Carolina, and he nailed the very essence of the Southern way of life in this book, AND he gave me such a wave of nostalgia that I am still riding it! The pace is consistent to the point that there is no lag in the middle and I lost all track of time. It is the kind of book as when you get deeper into it, the lights dim around you, and if you have a pet/spouse/kids/partner, and they tap you in any way, they will have to peel you off the ceiling.I give this book 6 bookmarks out of 5! Yes, it is that good! How good? I might just be buying this as Christmas gifts for all my friends!

“The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampire’s” is a bit of a misnomer. You don’t really get a “guide” and there is just the one “vampire”, and the lore around that particular vampire is unlike any I’m familiar with. But that was part of the fun of this book. Or, not fun, as this was an intense commentary on gaslighting, sexism, and racism in Charleston in the early 90’s. Or as intense of a commentary as a white man can make, but I think the point was infuriatingly well made. And while there is no mystery around the vampire, even if it takes these housewives awhile to see it for themselves, the writing was easy and creepy and managed to make me absolutely rage at all the right places. This book really was a look into just how vital the invisible support system of running a household is, the overlooked emotional labor, and just how overtly that gets taken advantage of, in no small part thanks to the burden of hospitality ingrained in each of these women. This was my first book by this author so I was a bit hesitant at first as horror is hit or miss for me, but I thoroughly enjoyed this satirical horror story.I am a new mom and a big true crime fan so already the ladies in this book resonated with me. These moms, despite being very different from one another, are all easy to like and root for. And it’s also very easy to wish every single one of their husbands would burn in a fire. And that’s before the “villain” shows up. But really, James isn’t just a vampire. He’s a symbol of the socio-economic divide between communities. The fact that no one cared about what he did in the poorer, predominately Black neighborhoods until it started to affect the upper-class white neighborhoods, for example. It would have been nice if Mrs. Greene was more of a main character for that very reason, but as Patricia was the only main character in the entire book club, I’ll try not to get hung up on it too much. This book is satire, and while some people may claim it feels more like the 1950’s instead of the 1990s, I KNOW a lot of places in the South still operate the way Hendrix portrays this community (I lived in a suburb of New Orleans for a few years and can attest to that). Hendrix may be the only male writer I’ve read that really captured the utter rage and frustration of how these women are constantly talked over and how condescending their husbands are to them. I honestly went to bed mad so many times because of it, but that was also the point, so kudos to the author there.However the book is a bit slow in the middle. Which is why I am giving it 4 stars; the pacing was my only real issue. It felt like it took such a long time for the housewives to go up against James in, as Hendrix says, “Dracula vs. my mom” once Patricia knows what she’s up against. When the showdown did happen, it was perfectly gory and unsettling and Patricia and Kitty were so clutch that I was mentally clapping for them the entire time. Even Slick and Grace, who I liked the least, had my sympathy at the end and I wanted nothing more than for them to win. Well, maybe not Grace so much, but I liked how Ms. Greene called her out, too. The ending was a little bittersweet, but it also felt right for the characters and their families, as well. All this to say, not only did I really enjoy this book, but I’m excited to read more by this author in the future!

Though he’s regarded by some as drenched in irony and snark, I’ve never found Grady Hendrix’s forays into horror to be less than great, embracing all sorts of horror tropes with the ease of an expert, all while finding some way to marry the themes of the horror to something larger – the dangers of defining yourself by your work in Horrorstör, for instance, or the way that we grow apart from our friends as filtered through demonic possession in My Best Friend’s Exorcism. And in Hendrix’s hands, The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires turns from a typical vampire novel a la Salem’s Lot (mysterious stranger comes to small town, etc.) into an exploration of motherhood and what it’s like to try to find your way through parenting when you can’t even find time for yourself.That metaphor isn’t quite as tight as usual for Hendrix, which both frees up the book to go in different directions but also makes it a little looser in terms of structure, with some odd beats that never quite feel tied into the novel. (I can’t help but feel there was more to the story of our main character’s son than ended up in the final version of the story, where it simply feels disquieting but also unresolved.) But the result is a pretty fun tale about a group of suburban women who start bonding after they start a book club that’s less pretentious than the “official” one, becoming tight friends and each other’s lifelines when life is hard. And when a young man named James Harris moves in down the street, as good Southern women, they want to reach out, but, well, he’s never that active during the day, and the windows are darkened…Hendrix nicely leans into the dramatic irony brought about by the name of the book, letting the reader be aware of what’s going on well before the main characters, but that doesn’t stop him from taking the idea of vampires into far more unexpected territory, as Harris both plays to the desire for money by the men folk and the willingness of a small town to overlook crimes happening in the Black neighborhoods of the city. Indeed, if there’s another central conceit to the novel beyond the motherhood one, it’s the reframing of the vampire not as the romantic Count Dracula, but as the wandering serial killer, one without ties, human morality, or any connection to the world around him, and in doing so, Hendrix gives us a vampire that’s both true to our ideas of the creature and yet doesn’t remind us of anyone but himself – a hard thing to do in vampire fiction these days.I really enjoyed Book Club a lot; yes, the book isn’t quite as thematically tight as Hendrix’s other works, but it gains from the way that that looseness allows Hendrix to take the plot into ways that examine classism, sexism, racism, parenting, suburbia, and more, all while never forgetting that he’s delivering a horror novel and has to bring the goods on that front. And he definitely does here, with a few knockout sequences that show that there’s more to Hendrix than the unfair labels that have been put on him by some. For my money, Hendrix is four for four, and Book Club is just further proof that he’s not just a lover of pulp horrors, but a solid writer for any horror fan to enjoy.

“He thinks we’re what we look like on the outside: nice Southern ladies. Let me tell you something…there’s nothing nice about Southern ladies.”― Grady HendrixI love a great vampire story, unfortunately, they're hard to find. The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires did not disappoint. This is a Southern-gothic horror novel reminiscent of Flannery O’ Connor’s style of writing, specifically, her short story, A Good Man Is Hard To Find.Set in Charleston South Carolina during the early to mid-1990s, a group of housewives forms a book club that focuses on true-crime literature. Aside from the disturbing subject matter they read, their lives are relatively placid and filled with the everyday routines of keeping house for their husbands and children. The main protagonist, Patricia is enthralled and somewhat ashamed of the subject matter she and her friends read in the book club. At times, though, she feels angst toward the direction her life has taken, how unremarkable and humdrum it’s become. She wishes that just once something exciting would happen. Excitement does come in the form of a new neighbor, James Harris. It’s unclear where James is from, his story changes depending on whom he’s talking to, and James has some strange habits. Over the course of Patricia’s friendship with James, disturbing aspects of his character come to light. When Patricia learns that her neighbor is not who he pretends to be, but someone or something that may be preying on the community, she makes it her mission to stop him, but James has already gained the trust of Patricia’s husband and the husbands of her friends.This is a well-written novel, with rich descriptions that run from idyllic, to unsettling, to masterfully grotesque. The dialogue is sprinkled with southernisms, the characters likable and deeply flawed. As a reader you are lulled into Patricia’s domestic world, her everyday worries of laundry, school lunches, and house cleaning, and the warm friendships she forms with the other women in the book club. The club is a place for them to get away and let their hair down a bit, drink cheap wine, read trashy novels, eat junky snacks and take a whack at dissecting the mindset of serial killers.Quirky and sometimes darkly humorous, The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires also reads likes a cozy mystery. It uses the tropes of small-town life, and a benign cozy activity the characters revolve around, in this case, the book club, Patricia acting as the amateur sleuth. Yet, the author also makes a mockery of small-town southern life and its pleasantries, as well as the traditional gender roles, exaggerating them so that it almost feels a little Stepford, a little nineteen fiftyish, although it’s the 1990s. A parallel theme in this tale is the banality of the kept woman and her smothered potential, niceties, and etiquette standing in for true feelings or truth in general until one’s life becomes a sort of aberration. Etiquette is the aide that holds Patricia’s community in the diabolical grip of the smiling well-mannered new-comer, and it takes our protagonist a long time, years, in fact, for her to realize that she needs to throw her nice girl cloak off and finally get real before she loses everything.

"Sometimes she craved a little danger. And that was why she had book club."Sometimes, I have complex, layered reasons for picking up a particular book. Not so with Grady Hendrix’s The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Vampire Slaying. I mean, take a look at that title! Who could resist?I’d just come off of a marathon reading session of challenging reads and I wanted light, engaging fare. It’s safe to say that my expectations were pretty high and my standards low. This book’s got everything I want in a vacation read, and early reviews teed it up to be the golf equivalent of a slam dunk. I was entirely unprepared to hate this book.When I first saw this book advertised before its publication, I was instantly and indelibly reminded of two things that I love: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and a text post from years and years back about a post-apoc video game wherein you fought as a ’50s housewife complete with tea dress, gloves, and pearls. If you haven’t seen either of these, stop now and investigate. I’ll be here when you come back.Those images in mind, and a vague notion of sticky, hot summers depicted in movies and tv, I poured myself an actual lemonade and kicked back to bury myself in what was sure to be an enjoyable book.And truth be told aspects of this book are fantastic. Hendrix has done some really cool things in building and exploring this narrative, and they are absolutely worth exploring. Really, as far as I’m concerned the book has only one fatal flaw.There isn’t a single tolerable character in its 404 pages.And honestly, there isn’t all that much to say about that. At no point could I connect with, relate to, support, or tolerate reading about any of the characters – either because they were intolerable people or because they received no characterization. There was no in-between. There were no outliers.While I think it’s probably enough to say that I hated all of the other characters, and leave it at that, I feel duty-bound to explain some of what I disliked about the main character, Patricia. Because she did break this book for me, and with just a couple of simple qualities.15 pages into The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Vampire Slaying, I made the following note:"I’m just not sure I can drum up a whole book’s worth of sympathy (or patience) for the 'oh, woe is me – for things in the house need doing and I’m too weak and female to ask for help with the housework' crowd."That’s perhaps not the most charitable of descriptions, but as this book churned on page after page after page, it turned out that I really didn’t have that much sympathy or patience to give to a woman who was simultaneously this self-defeating and this certain that she was in the right.It’s not that I don’t understand that many women shoulder the main burden of housework, or that they struggle to ask their partners for meaningful help. I’ve been that woman. I get it. And it’s not that it’s all that intolerable to watch a character make dumb decision after dumb decision and not learn from it.It’s that she did it all with this doe-eyed self-centeredness, and that we had to be right there with her the entire time because she was our main character.And that’s kind of that, really. Patricia broke me.However, Hendrix did do some cool things that are totally worth celebrating.There’s not a lot about a vampire story, even a modern urban vampire story that hasn’t been done before, and Hendrix did something really novel in setting his vampire story not against any old southern backdrop but a modern suburban backdrop. He then could use the clearly defined elements of the setting to juxtapose the real and the unreal, the mundane and the supernatural, and simultaneously play fast and loose with the traditions we all know (whether we love them or not) from the vampire mythos. And play he does. It’s a delicious concept and very well framed.Adding to this the specific way he centers his story and particularly Patricia’s attention around the book club really brings weight to this story. It feels very modern, offering Hendrix his best opportunities for highlighting through contrast the otherworldliness of the undead element. And if there had been any characters to speak of this is where they really would have shone.Instead, out of the vacuum where characters could have been, shines one very amusing bright light: Hendrix’ frequent references to literature. The conceit of using the books the Book Club is reading to frame the evolving narrative seems like it might be a simple technique that offers a couple of cutesy moments, or a chintzy gimmick to put a spin on a pretty tropey narrative tradition. But Hendrix positively nails it, and if I hadn’t absolutely loathed the main character Patricia this one aspect alone is so strong it would have saved this book in my eyes.Also of note, I think, is an oft-overlooked detail. A huge amount of care was put into the design of this physical book, and it is absolutely lovely to behold. What makes this baffling is th...