The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires
Ratings281
Average rating3.8
Steel Magnolias meets Dracula in this '90s-set horror novel about a women's book club that must do battle with a mysterious newcomer to their small Southern town, perfect for murderinos and fans of Stephen King.
Patricia Campbell’s life has never felt smaller. Her husband is a workaholic, her teenage kids have their own lives, her senile mother-in-law needs constant care, and she’s always a step behind on her endless to-do list. The only thing keeping her sane is her book club, a close-knit group of Charleston women united by their love of true crime. At these meetings they’re as likely to talk about the Manson family as they are about their own families.
One evening after book club, Patricia is viciously attacked by an elderly neighbor, bringing the neighbor's handsome nephew, James Harris, into her life. James is well traveled and well read, and he makes Patricia feel things she hasn’t felt in years. But when children on the other side of town go missing, their deaths written off by local police, Patricia has reason to believe James Harris is more of a Bundy than a Brad Pitt. The real problem? James is a monster of a different kind—and Patricia has already invited him in.
Little by little, James will insinuate himself into Patricia’s life and try to take everything she took for granted—including the book club—but she won’t surrender without a fight in this blood-soaked tale of neighborly kindness gone wrong.
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From the title, I was expecting a clever satire. What I got was a mediocre, trope filled horror novel.
It was fine. The first section of the book had good pacing and some increasingly tense and terrifying scenes that lived up to the marketing. The pacing in part two felt too slow and then the author decided to use sexual assault as a plot point, which was unnecessary. It turned me off the book for about a month before I decided to just finish it. The end was solid and duly gruesome with only a slight nod to some of the racial dynamics that may have been true in the 90s but probably could have been reevaluated for this story.
I agree with Grady Hendrix that the scariest things in the world aren't monsters, it's patriarchy and white privilege. But a little less desperate housewives and more vampires would've made this way less a chore to get through.
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