The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires: A Novel

Product Information

This book is not easy, entertaining reading! It is so smart, gruesome, wild, bloody blended with dark humor, sarcasm, criticizing of the role of wives and structures of marriage. But I may tell you this is epic and darkly heart wrenching women friendship book. Their bonding reminded me of Thelma and Louise’s last scene and filled my eyes in tears! Then she got in her Volvo and hoped Grace was right and this was all just a product of the overactive imagination of a stupid little housewife with too much free time on her hands. If it was, she promised herself, tomorrow she would vacuum her curtains. I have been a fan of Grady since Horrorstor and was really looking forward to this one, but it's just not very good. Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. The title is misleading. They got the Southern Book Club part right, but if you go into this book thinking that multiple vampires will be slain by said book club, you will be disappointed. Not only do most of the book club members not even believe there is a vampire in town for at least 80% of the book, but notice that I said “vampire” and not “vampires”. Also, in no way is this book a “guide” to anything, so I feel the title was chosen to be literary and cool and catchy.

Even though this was harsh, bumpy, bloody reading, I enjoyed every second of it and I wished it would never end! Some of the producers should wake up and realize this book is secret gem and it is needed to be adapted into streaming series. (Especially the heart wrenching story about bitter peaches was remarkable and unforgettable part of this book!) Seriously. Just because I love my kids more than air doesn't mean I'm not going to tell them to piss right off if they start to think I'm some sort of emotional punching bag. i liked it more than it sounds like i did here, but less than i expected to like it. but again, everything is broken, so it's probably me reading it wrong. you will tell me how wrong i am.

Latest Posts

Thank you, Grady Hendrix, for adding to my already infinite TBR with some of these True Crime titles. A delight…its incisive social commentary and meaningful character development make The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires not just a palatable read for non-horror fans, but a winning one.”—US A Today, 3.5 out of 4 star review Then Patricia sees things she can't un-see! Is it too late to do anything about it? Who would believe her? Is she no longer safe? And, what about her family? I don’t have answers to these questions but here’s some non-spoilery context. As is traditional in vampire lore, the consuming of people has sexual overtones. In this book, instead of being portrayed as sexy seduction, the feeding is portrayed as the rape of both adults and children, including grooming children and, in a sense, using drugs to sedate and control rape victims. I appreciated the fact that these rape scenes are not glamorized. However, they are very graphic. I’ve written more about the problem I have with graphic rape scenes in my post “Mad Max: Fury Road Makes Your Rape Arguments Invalid.” In this book, the purpose of these scenes is just to horrify, and I truly can’t decide whether this is problematic or not. They sure succeeded in horrifying me, but honestly I was horrified enough without them.

And, then James Harris moves in. And, the children start to disappear in a less affluent part of town. I truly deeply madly in love with this book! More than five gazillion stars! Somebody has to stop my fingers adding entire books of the author to my nearly collapsing Mount TBR! But I cannot stop with only one book. Can I? This predictable pattern is upended when Patricia meets James Harris, a handsome stranger who moves into the neighborhood to take care of his elderly aunt and ends up joining the book club. James is sensitive and well-read, and he makes Patricia feel things she hasn't felt in 20 years. But there's something off about him. He doesn't have a bank account, he doesn't like going out during the day, and Patricia's mother-in-law insists that she knew him when she was a girl, an impossibility.

Patricia Campbell’s life has never felt smaller. Her ambitious husband is too busy to kiss her good-bye in the morning, her kids are wrapped up in their own lives, and she’s always a step behind on thank-you notes and endless chores. The one thing she has to look forward to is her book club, a close-knit group of Charleston women united by their love of true crime and suspenseful fiction. There’s a reason southern woman are called steel magnolias. Their outer gentility belies their inner strength and fortitude. Underestimate them at your peril. Patricia Campbell gave up her career as a nurse, to be stay at home Mother raising her two children with a distant husband. Her book club was her one escape. It was a place where she could indulge her love to true crime and suspenseful fiction. Steel Magnolias meets Dracula in this New York Times best-selling horror novel about a women’s book club that must do battle with a mysterious newcomer to their small Southern town.

They defined this book as mash up of Steel Magnolias-Fried Green Tomatoes and Dracula! No, sir: this is Stepford Wives and Southern Desperate Housewives meet True Blood! The novel ends with an epilogue in which a newsletter from Marjorie Fretwell sums up the 1999 book club’s year and tells them she is looking forward to the new millennium. Blood Bath: Played with. James is a vampire, but his actual blood bath comes up when the book club, and Mrs Green, get him into the bathtub and chop him up, meaning that he doesn't get into it or choose to soak into it, but he ends up there through circumstances. Spiritual Antithesis: In the foreword, Hendrix stated that he intended it as this to another of his novels, My Best Friend's Exorcism. Both are set in Charlestown in relatively recent historical periods (the 1980s in the case of the latter, and the 1990s for this one), cover years, and show female friendship facing off against an otherworldly evil that is ultimately defeated through perseverance. However, while that book was written from a teenage point of view and presented the adults as useless, this book is told from the parents' point of view and is about them trying to protect their families. I know I shouldn't judge a book by its title, but The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires got me real good. It sounds like a fun, lighthearted take on slaying vampires, mixed in with some Southern hospitality and book club joviality. And it started out that way. But then it went somewhere else altogether.I am not sure what the appropriate gesture is to make toward the family of the woman who bit off your ear, but if you felt absolutely compelled, I certainly wouldn’t take food.” The southern book club's guide to slaying vampires, 2020, ISBN 978-1-0941-3695-0, OCLC 1147251774 , retrieved 2020-07-11 Funnily enough, this popped up on my virtual hold shelf overnight but I think I am going to defer it for now and wait for a time when I feel better able to deal with the content. I appreciate Grady Hendrix as a male horror writer who manages to write about women and female friendships in very realistic and authentic ways but he doesn’t always hit the mark for me when it comes to the underlying social contexts he’s commenting on. Five regular Southern housewives (at least that’s what their moron husbands think about them!) start a book club to read true crime stories and discuss them! (See! There is nothing ordinary about them. They know their dark sides and they also know how to retrain it!) Well, this one is not for everyone I do highly recommend giving it a try. You might find yourself as surprised as I did!

I want to add something to this review. Animals and people alike come to harm in this story because it's a vampire story. But I love a very touching scene in this book and for all my griping about gruesome, this book has the sweetest treatment of an old dog. It's very special and it meant a lot to me and that treatment has made me a big fan of this author. This book has a fun mix of satire, humor, and horror. Patricia Campbell and her friends have a classics book club but it’s stuffy and few enjoy it. When a friend gives Patricia a copy of a true crime book, a new club of ‘murderinos’ is formed who read only true crime (if you’re a fan, you will have lots of books to add to the tbr). Yeah, that rings a bell. I did the stay-at-home mom thing for a couple of decades, so there's another thing we have in common. Overall: I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT! This is one of the best books of the year! Go on, get it and read it! The Author Resource Round Table on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/group_folder/116489?group_id=26989What you can expect is a VERY CAMPY story that is so enjoyable because the characters and their lives are so realistic between the HORROR scenes, that you might start to believe that a vampire CAN move in next door to you... After the prologue, the definition of the word “housewife” is presented, and then the first section, “Cry The Beloved Country,” begins. The section is labeled “November 1988.” All of the sections in the book are titled with the name of the selection the book club is reading in that particular month. The novel switches from an omniscient to a close-third on Patricia Campbell, the main character. the stories themselves are not played for laffs. that’s not to say there’s never anything funny in them, but they’re not the campy adventures the covers might lead you to expect. When a stranger, James, appears in their quiet little southern town, strange things begin happening. There are violent deaths and the children in town begin disappearing. Patricia has her suspicions about James but she has trouble getting anyone to believe her. However, Patricia is tenacious and soon she and her friends band together to rid the town of the threat. These women were a hoot. We all need friends like these. At first it was the little things - he misplaced his ID and legal documents. He has a severe sun allergy.