The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

(Author's Note: I finished this book November 2021.)

(Trigger Warning: Mention of Rape)

“This story ends in blood...By the time this story is over, they will be covered in blood. Some of it will be theirs. Some of it will belong to others. But they will drip with it. They will swim in it. They will drown in it.”

Alright, I’m hooked, a thriller set in the past about about a southern book club fighting vampires? I’ll bite.

I’ve been interested in Grady Hendrix for a while now, and I don’t remember why I chose this book to start with, but it was the right book to show me that I want to read more.

Hendrix knows how to hook a reader in, and keep you interested for the journey. This book centers on a woman, Patricia, who is a wife, mother, and member of the local book club. She is written as your average stay at home mom who takes care of her home and children.

Immediately I liked her character because the book begins with her going to her book club meeting and she didn’t read the book.

Soon, the town starts to change because a new person moves into town. People start to go missing and children begin killing themselves. Patricia begins an obsession with this new stranger, and she soon figures out he is more than just a creep in the neighborhood, he is a MONSTER. Patricia has a hard time getting people to believe her, so will she be able to save her community? Patricia begins to investigate in order to find answers to her questions.

This book hit all the check marks of a thriller: a fast pace, good suspense, disgusting descriptions, and a satisfying conclusion.

This book would be a solid five stars for me except for one thing. The violence against women in the form of rape. I don’t know why authors (especially male ones) believe that for a horror novel to be good that there needs to be a rape scene. By the time this scene happened the vampire was revealed and his acts were already horrific. The rape leads to this particular character staying in a hospital, but if that were the case then this character could simply be attacked by the vampire and have to go to the hospital for blood loss. There were many ways to have this character move the plot without a rape scene since there were already tons of dark and traumatic moments. The vampire character was already racist, sexist, and pedophilic on top of being a vampire. I felt that the rape scene was only thrown in for shock value, and did not add any value.

Typically something like this would prevent me from reading other books from the author, but I already own two others so I'm going to give him another chance.

4 stars