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

“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.”

Patricia Campbell is a housewife in Charleston who can’t catch a break. She gave up a career as a nurse to marry an ambitious doctor who’s never home. She doesn’t have any help, her kids are ungrateful and on top of that, her mother-in-law just moved in with her. The only thing Patricia looks forward to during the week is her true crime book club. They read the filthiest of murders and discuss them in great detail even though their husbands believe that their group is a church group getting together to discuss the Bible.

A mysterious and handsome stranger moves into the neighborhood and the women spend a lot of time during their meetings speculating about him. Patricia finds him very attractive at first and invites him over to her house for dinner often. Until a few children over on the black side of town go missing and the car seen around the neighborhood looks exactly like his. Patricia starts having doubts about him and starts investigating what is really going on in their town.

“A no-good man will tell you he’s going to change,” she said. “He’ll tell you whatever you want to hear, but you’re the fool if you don’t believe what you see.”

I had a very different idea of what this book would be before I went in. I thought it would be funny and heartwarming. I mean the premise is ridiculous and I thought the author was going to run with it but he didn’t. I found this book to be way more serious than it needed to be, given the subject matter – for crying out loud, middle class women fighting a vampire .

It started out that way and I personally think it took a turn for the worse. I found this book to be both gory and gross. It’s very, very gory so, if you are a sensitive reader, I don’t think this book is for you. For example, there is an entire scene with rats eating someone alive. I found that terrifying and I don’t know why I kept reading it.

I also found this book to be over written. There were so many details that the author included that didn’t need to be in the book. This book is 400 pages when it didn’t need to be more than 300 with the dumbest characters I’ve read about in so long. All the men are super sexist while all the women are housewives and demure except the black woman who is a – I’ll wait for you to guess – housekeeper!

The main character presented enough evidence proving that their new neighbor wasn’t who he claimed to be and everyone just turned a blind eye at it. Sure, if it was real life and someone told me that my new neighbor is a vampire, I’d be skeptical too, but what is the fun in a book where a couple dead kids mean nothing.

One part of this book that rang true and mirrored real life to me was the fact that the vampire started out killing and sucking on black kids. It was easier for the white characters to ignore because it wasn’t happening to their kids and Patricia told them that bluntly. As long as it wasn’t happening on their side of town, they were content to do nothing. They only acted when he started coming after them and their kids and they were appropriately called out and the subject was well addressed in the book.

This book just did way too much. It has vampires, housewives, abusive husbands, sexist men, Nazis (yes, Nazis!), racism, book clubs, raccoons, rats and the list keeps going. I gave this book 2 stars on Goodreads. You can read it if it checks out to you on your library app on a day you’re bored and have nothing else to read.

Leggy