The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires
Grady Hendrix
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.
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0 0The southern book clubs guide to slaying vampires
- this is a horror / Thriller and I ended up quite enjoying it!
- it is definitely gross /has thrilling parts, with rats killing the old lady, the other old lady eating a raccoon's guts and biting Patty's ear off, the proboscis! Roaches in her ear-- GAG!
- definitely gave me the heebie-jeebies and made my stomach clench too
- someone at book club said that this author was good at using these things that people already fear/ hate
- I was so mad at the gaslighting happening in this book, when all of the husbands (but specially Patty's husband) basically tell the women that they are letting their imaginations run wild and have gone too far-- and he wants her to apologize too! I was mad!
- I do feel like race was a topic that was handled weirdly, Mrs Greene was not a very well-rounded character/ did not get recognized for her part
- the time Jump was weird, for Patty to just let things go-- but before that was the suicide attempt?? That felt like it kind of came from nowhere and was a huge ? . Patty lost all of her potential power /any faith in her word with that act. This felt like it did not make sense
- also why couldn't the vampire sense Patty in his attic?
- Patty was trying to play detective by planting the license-- duh
- when they butchered him-- ugh so gruesome but also I couldn't stop reading / picturing it
- why didn't they burn the bits? It'll just be a problem in the future when those burial plots are needed!
- I wish there would have been more consistent follow through with the women supporting other women
- there were a few potholes: blood transfusion saves Patty's girl, Alibi for rape? Pregnant with vampire? Ghost element
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