The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires

By: Grady Hendrix

“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.”

Grady Hendrix, The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires

*This post contains spoilers

This isn’t a book that I would have picked out by myself. I tend to judge books by there cover and the title and imagery don’t really appeal to what I’m usually in the mode to read.

One of my friends gave me a copy and she absolutely loved it. She wanted someone to discuss it with but I unfortunately had to let her down as I did not match her enthusiasm for the story.

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Overview:

Patricia Campbell, wants more out of life. Each day she takes care of her family, cleans her house and attends the required social functions that come along with being a Southern suburban housewife.

The monotony of life, leads her and a few choice neighbors into joining a book club focusing on true crime and horror novels. These stories, allow the women a chance to escape the proper and polite topics and discuss what actually interests them.

Soon, a mysterious stranger comes to town with no ID, a bag full of cash and the tendency to have those who cross his path disappear. Refusing to be like the women in her books, Patricia senses danger and is determined to find out who he truly is.

Is there a real threat to the citizens of Charleston or has Patricia simply been reading too many novels?

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My thoughts:

I thought this would be way different. I expected it to be kitchy and almost like those mystery series where the author cranks out 12 in a year somehow. This is genuine horror which was a pleasant surprise but the story couldn’t deliver on other aspects.

In the end, the book club really had nothing to do with the plot. They could have easily just been neighbors with husbands that did business together and the same outcome would have occurred. You can argue that the books they chose to read are the reasons that no one believes Patricia because she is susceptible to seeing danger everywhere, but it was barely even a factor.

It would have been great if she was just being influences by the books to think there was something there that wasn’t but then in the end turns out she was right all along. 400 pages of a women being gaslit by her husband and all of her friends is not dynamic nor interesting when you know that she is right the whole time. It’s just infuriating and unsatisfying when her friends finally believe her with only 50 pages to go.

I think removing the book club plot could have allowed the author to set the story further in the past. This did not feel like a 90s book at all. I did not imagine these women wearing high-waisted jeans and drinking diet coke. I kept picturing them in proper southern dresses and their husbands taking off their hats before they entered the room. The author clearly wanted to touch upon the fear that true crime and Stephen King books brought to culture, but the plot feels very disjointed from the time period. Major changes would have had to been made to make these two concepts mesh.

But wait guys. There is not one book club but two.

In the beginning of the story the women are in another book club that we are led to believe is pretentious and no one enjoys. You would think that by leaving the official book club in town the women find friendship and a support system with one another. However, they really are no different than the women from the first book club. Instead of being this group of strong women trying to save their community and children, they chose to believe a strange man over someone they have known for years. They might as well have just stayed in the first club or not been in one at all.

Another thing was Patricia’s relationship with James Harris and the fact that it should have been explored more. You never felt like she was actually drawn to him or had complex feelings about what he could give her to change her unhappy life.

They also shared a bank account and it never came back into play. Patricia’s name is on James Harris’s accounts so all the money he put in there would be hers. Why did this never matter? Either he should have used it against her to further himself and keep her quiet or she should have been able to access it after his death allowing her to live well after all she has been through.

In terms of the climax of the story, it was entirely too short. There was no back and forth or any epic fight just a super quick tussle before the enemy was defeated. He is a very powerful being who has managed to stay alive for who knows how long and they end his reign all within the four quarters of a football game.

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Overall,

I thought it was just ok.

It does not make me want to seek out more from Hendrix but I wouldn’t write him off entirely.

Heck, even if the vampire was metaphorical, that would have been so much better.

I was a housewife for three years, I fully understand how hard it is to run a household for a husband who doesn’t see your value and constantly wants more and more from you until you are whittled down to nothing. No amount of awesome crime scene cleaning would make me feel like I finally felt respected. Just burn the house down.

Book club by day, protectors of the cul de sac by night.? No, just women who are good at cleaning stuff.

Rating: 3/5 stars