The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

Overall, I liked this book, truly, but I'm also frustrated. While The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires takes a minute to really pick up, once it does it grabs your attention and hold it until the very end in a spooky and thrilling ride. But holy hell did I want to reach in and strangle several characters throughout the entire book (starting with Carter and ending with Patricia herself). You know that feeling where you're screaming at people acting dumb in a horror movie, that was me while reading this book. I hated it but also loved it because I couldn't look away without knowing what happened.

Now for a grain of salt. I think this book dropped a major ball on one of its key underlying theme: racism. We're in the deep south in a small rich white town where a monster preys on the poorer black community of Six Mile and our characters turn their backs on the problem. Don't get me wrong Hendrix definitely TRIES to make this commentary, but it's in throw away details and one-liners by the books singular black character whose name we don't even learn until the final arc of the novel. It's simply not enough. I think at it's heart, the novel has potential to be a great commentary on racism and the willingness of privileged characters turning their backs on a problem until it directly involves them, but every time the story sets us up for this commentary, it falls flat and refocuses on how the problem is bad because it involved white women and their equally white children.