Book Review: The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

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

Author: Grady Hendrix

Release Date: April 2020

Rating: 3.5

Synopsis

The Southern' Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires follows Patricia who for is living the “American Dream” she has a house, a husband, and two children. She lives in a neighborhood where you don’t need to lock your back door, the neighbors know where you spare key is and if anything bad happens there is always someone to bring you a casserole. Everything seems perfect, the picturesque 90s, there is nothing to complain about. Patricia is a stay at home mom and enjoys taking care of her children and her husband, but does wish she had a little more of something that she could call her own. One day a man moves in down the street. He seems charming, he seems nice, and all the neighbors can’t help but fall for his charm, and think he is such a great guy. Patricia, however, is not as convinced — because she is part of a book club where they read true crime novels and Patricia is convinced that they are missing something crucial and they might have the next Ted Bundy on their hands. She really tries her hardest to convince people that the man that everyone loves isn’t the man he says he is. And things begin to unravel from there.

Review

Let’s start with a content warning just super super quick: if you do not like bugs, this book is not for you. This book has other trigger warnings as well that I will note at the bottom of this review as they contribute to spoilers. 

I think overall this book was very well written, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I did have a bit of hard time getting into the first 10% but after that it was smooth sailing. There were a few time jumps which I think messed up the flow a little bit for me personally, but I understand why they were there. Typically, for me with horror, the horror that I enjoy, are the supernatural elements that are just there to highlight the scary things that are going on in the real world and I think this book has a lot of things to take away from it. It’s a good reminder that the evil in this world isn’t vampires, it’s people. It also talks a lot about the mother experience such as how far a mother will go for her child, and I think it did a really good job with that. I also love when writing can make you squirm from anxiety or rage, or make you viscerally dislike certain characters, and I will definitely be checking out more Grady Hendrix books as I liked his writing style.

TW: death of children, graphic death, body gore, SA on page, domestic violence, suicidal ideation