*Disclaimer: I want to first start off this review with a huge thanks to Netgalley and the publisher of Grady's dark comedy/vampire book, Quirk Books for an advanced readers copy for my honest review.*

Patricia Campbell is the typical, 39 year old bored, southern housewife who wishes she had it better, and better teenaged kids who appreciated her more. She is also a member of a group of southern women's local book club, who are obsessed with Ted Bundy, Ann Rule, true crime and suspense. When an elderly neighbor man dies suddenly and his extremely handsome grand nephew comes into town to take care of the funeral and his death, the book club becomes obsessed with him, James Harris.

Knowing beforehand of going into this book, I expected it to be quite a dark comedy and horror filled novel in the same vein of Hendrix's "Best Friends Exorcism" ( which I loved by the way!) but it wasn't. This almost could be called a sequel to that book being about the Parents of the teens from that first one, and what happens to them this time around. I have never been a great big fan of mixing horror with comedy, but I had high hopes for this one and it never took off for me. The horror aspects didnt even really get going until almost 45 percent into the book, and I was wondering if it was going to pick up speed....it didnt. Now I'm not saying I would not recommend this 100 percent to those who love their horror and love for vampires mixed with spoiled, gossipy and nosey rich people, because that is where Hendrix shines as an incredible author, that is just not my style, and I am not saying that this does not have horror in it, it has some creepy and very graphic depictions of blood and guts. There is one great scene where the 'mysterious stranger that comes into town' is on the roof of the house in the middle of the night that was very well imagined, and i actually felt like i was in there with Patricia and her girlfriends. With me living here in Sacramento CA I loved the parts of the women talking about their obsessions with serial killers and blood draining crazies such as The Sacramento Vampire of the 80's and even Ted Bundy, which was right from my own neighborhood where I grew up in Tacoma Washington! Hendrix had this nailed dead center in the bullseye of the true horrors of LIFE.

When I pick up a horror novel, even if it is mixed with satire and humor, the horror aspect has to take over the comedy and leave me with the feeling of unease and fear. I love to be scared and left with a reading experience that makes me think about who really lives next door to me, and what is lying dead in their basements. Enjoy.

This book absolutely ruled and I can’t wait to sell it at my store. This book makes vampires scary again. I ripped through this super quickly, and it’s absolutely my favorite of Grady Hendrix’s books

I loved My Best Friend's Exorcism and We Sold Our Souls, which made me confident that I would also enjoy The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires. But I was unprepared for just how much I would enjoy this book.! The book sucked me in right away, and I had trouble putting it down. I could easily have finished it in two days if I hadn't had to do things like sleep and go to work.

The book is set in the mid-1990s, when I was in high school, and populated by a group of southern housewives who are about the same age I am now, so I appreciated little details like the clothes the characters wore and some of the material things they were concerned with. But I especially liked the invocation of the horror tropes of the day. When Patricia goes to the bookstore in search of vampire novels, her list of purchases reads like my summer reading list from that time period.

I really liked protagonist Patricia Campbell and her book club -- Grace, Slick, Maryellen, and Kitty. And I particularly like how they took the things they learned from reading true crime paperbacks and put them to good use against the stranger in town, James Harris.

While there is humor here, the book is also dark and disturbing. I was already a Hendrix fan, but this is definitely my new favorite Grady Hendrix book!

This is one of those most horrifying books I've read in a long time.

Yes, this book would be categorized as traditional horror--a Southern housewife pursues a vampire, after all, and--and the suspense and gore certainly fit within those parameters. But Hendrix also introduces domestic, social horror as well. The men are all (yes, ALL) irredeemably terrible and stupid, including the husbands and the villain himself, and the titular vampire preys on poor, Black neighborhoods because he knows he'll get away with it. I had to put this eARC down several times not because I was tired of it but because I wanted to scream at these men.

CW: rape, child abuse, domestic abuse, general gore

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

I fell hard for Grady Hendrix after reading We Sold Our Souls, so when I heard he had another book coming out, I was interested. When I heard that book was set in the 1980s, I was very, very interested. When I heard that book was about proper Southern ladies fighting a vampire, I was OBSESSED.

(I have a thing for vampires.)

Patricia Campbell is your typical housewife, living in the suburbs of Charleston, SC. She cooks. She cleans. She drives carpool. She has a never-ending to-do list that keeps the lives of her husband and her two children running smoothly...all with little acknowledgement or appreciation.

She does have one thing for herself, though — her book club, where they read true crime novels and bond over the joy (and pain) of marriage and motherhood. They make each other laugh and hold each other as they cry.

So when she links the arrival of James Harris to a series of weirdly violent events and missing children, Patricia knows that she needs to stop him. And she needs her book club’s help.

They know he’s sucking the life from their hometown. He knows that they know, but he doesn’t care. Who would believe them?

In his author’s note Hendrix writes, “With this book I wanted to put a man freed from all responsibilities but his appetites against women whose lives are shaped by their endless responsibilities.”

This concept is a huge win for me! The evolution of these women from soccer moms into badass vampire killers was wonderful, especially Patricia. Hendrix shows the casual mistreatment and gaslighting that these women face (and overcome) in believable and relatable ways. He deftly shows how often good manners trap the women in uncomfortable, even dangerous situations. Patricia is a complex character who shows growth over the course of the book. The other characters are rather one-dimensional, standing in more as representations, but it works.

Hendrix’s style is a fun mix of pop culture, homage to old school horror, and satire. It’s a quick read and the writing is excellent. The essence of the 80s is well represented, with the book being described as “Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias meet Dracula.”

But this is no fluffy vampire romp. This is a gruesome, bloody, terrifying portrayal of a vampire slowly taking over and destroying everything these women love. And it’s also the story of the women standing up, slaying the monster, and saving themselves. Hallelujah!

I thoroughly enjoyed The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. Thank you to Grady Hendrix and Quirk Books for providing me with an advance reader copy in exchange for my review.

Grady Hendrix has become one of favorites! Hendrix's flare for nostalgia and unique stories make For a perfect combination. SBCGSV' is one of those books that you will remember and recommend often. Wish there was book club , not a book club like this in my area.

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

What scares you? Gory figures scuttling in the shadows? Cockroaches drilling in your ear? Losing your partner, your children, your sanity? That’s all here, and more, in Grady Hendrix’s Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires.
Patricia Campbell is an archetypical Southern housewife, both overwhelmed by her family’s demands and bored by her routine. Her guilty pleasure is meeting with her neighbors, also bored housewives, to discuss gruesome true crime books. Life in her well-manicured neighborhood turns sideways when she is attacked in her own yard. Everything spins out of control when she uncovers something horrifying about her new neighbor. Who can she turn to for help? Who are the real monsters?
If you’re looking for campy Southern belles sassing and staking their way through a cemetery, look elsewhere. Hendrix employs satire and a nostalgic nineties setting to ease the reader into a bleeding miasma of tribalism, racism, and vampire horror.

This review is based on an ARC, and appears on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3178745538

I stand by my initial assessment of this book on Goodreads: we don't deserve grady hendrix tbh.

I've been a fan of Grady Hendrix since reading <em>My Best Friend's Exorcism</em> for book club two years ago. His writing is engaging and accessible, and his ability to pull true horror out of absurd situations is unparalleled. In <em>The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires</em>, the themes are perfectly entertwined: the ennui of suburban motherhood, the feminine draw towards true crime, the systemic ignorance of predators in communities of color, and I'm sure a thousand things I've forgotten since I finished this book. Highly recommend, as with all of Grady Hendrix's books (I still haven't read <em>Paperbacks from Hell</em> but it's on my never-ending TBR list).

I love Grady Hendrix. Great book, turns the southern ladies and book club cliches on their heads. This book does it's own take on vampires and the effects they have on people.

I have not read a lot of horror and wanted to improve my reader’s advisory ability in this genre. This is the first title I read based on the summary on Net[Galley. Although set in the South, I kept picturing a neighborhood similar to the one found in the TV show Desperate Housewives where everything appears perfect but you never truly know who lives next door and what is going on behind closed doors. I really enjoyed the characters and rooted for the book club members as they navigated their daily lives, husbands, children and a vampire. It was creepy at times as well as funny and kept me turning pages until the very end.

If you took "Steel Magnolias" and "Fright Night" and mixed them together, you would get THE SOUTHERN BOOK CLUB'S GUIDE TO SLAYING VAMPIRES. Once again Hendrix has managed to make a very fun and quirky idea both quite funny, and greatly upsetting. Patricia is one of his best protagonists, with her determination and spunk that combines with vulnerability and flaws to make a complex and relatable character. I also really liked a number of the book club members, especially Kitty, as they were a varied bunch that managed to move past their given stereotypes. And on top of that, I loved how the villainous role wasn't relegated to the vampire mythos (more on that soon), as Hendrix made some very hateful characters of the ladies's husbands, who don't take their wives seriously and would believe a man they've just met over their wives. Patricia's husband Carter almost beat out James the vampire for the character I hated most. Hendrix's vampire mythos was both rooted in some of the classics, but had some original and unique elements to it that I really liked. James is both frightening but also very appealing in a lot of ways, and I think that the appeal is what you need to make a great vampire villain. Also, props to Hendrix for trying to talk about social justice issues, as the children that the vampire targets are those from a poor, predominantly black neighborhood, so outside of their community no one is really paying attention (there were some clunky things with this side plot, however). I will also say that there was a scene that involved an implied rape and the aftermath, that to me felt unnecessary. There were other ways that we could have hit home the dangers of certain characters, so that didn't sit too well with me as someone who is sick of seeing rape and sexual assault used as a way to up the stakes within a plot.

All that said, I did enjoy "The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires". Grady Hendrix is such a stand out horror voice because his ideas are so original.

WOW what an excellent book!! I love the idea of exploring the world built by My Best Friend's Exorcism. the characters were so flawed and beautifully real, and I haven't read a female protag written by a man this well in a long, long time. Well done Mr. Hendrix!!!

I went into this book expecting a campy tale of vampire destruction, e.g. the Buffy the Vampire Slayer film. What I got was a horror-filled psychological thriller with some humorous and heartwarming moments.

A Charleston suburb in the early 90's is the perfect setting as characters begin to question “How well do you really know your neighbor?”. Rats and other creepy crawlies feature prominently. However, the most chilling part of this book is how the vampire exploits the existing power dynamics in the community, whether it is a husband’s power over his wife or the white community’s power over the black community. Hendrix’s has written a thought-provoking and entertaining page-turner.

The way this book is written gives the reader such an easy path through a brilliant story.
I found myself excited to get back to it whenever I could.
Whilst the thought of another vampire book might put some people off, it shouldn’t. Not cheesy or twee in the slightest, this book for sure deserves to be read.

It's early in the year, but "The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires" might be my favorite book of 2020. I was absolutely riveted the entire time, and couldn't stop turning pages! One moment, this thrilling new novel feels like chick lit set in the humid south, complete with the palpable pull and obligation of southern manners and hospitality, and descriptions of the region so vivid you can smell the marshes. On the very next page is a jolting left turn into classic vampire horror in all its bloody glory with exciting new twists. Grady Hendrix's characters are equally relatable, frustrating, and lovable in turns, and the novel's commentary on justice, class, race, and the societal milieu of the 1990s is spot on. Expect thrills, chills, commentary on the dark side of "domestic bliss," and plenty of southern charm in this surprisingly empowering book about women's unshakable will and ability to "go the distance."

I read this book in 24 hours. What a wonderful and eclectic mix of vampire horror, Southern social commentary, and true crime references!

Grady Hendrix is able to combine elements of true horror with scenarios bordering on TV sit com — and it always works. The Southern Book Club’s Guide is kind of like the Ya Ya Sisterhood by way of Sam Raimi — entertaining, suspenseful, and gore galore, the way Hendrix does it best. Loved it.

Oh, wow, I have so much love for this book. It's everything I could want in a novel.
You've got your thrills...in a perfectly-plotted, page-turner of a story.
You've got chills...gruesome, skin-crawling, oh-I-don't-know-if-I-can-read-this kind of chills.
You've got humor...which easily holds up to the best of Christopher Moore.
And best of all, you've got friendship. It's not always perfect. It can get messy. But when the ladies of the Southern Book Club team up, their friendship is beautiful and powerful and quite simply a sight to behold.


Thank you Netgalley for the e-arc.

Book Review 📚 The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix (Out April 2020)

Rating: ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️(4.5)/5
Here’s the tea folks - Despite its fluffy title, this is a suspenseful, creepy, gruesome (oh god, the rats) addition to the vampire horror genre.
The @goodreads blurb describes it as "Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias meet Dracula." I would amend that to say "Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias meet Stephen King." This definitely had strong King vibes (think 'Salem's Lot meets The Outsider) and a fun 90's nostalgic vibe.
Having been part of a book club for over a decade, I love that, at its heart, this book is about the relationships forged between the women in the book club and the lengths to which they'll go to protect their family, even their shit, gaslighting husbands! Seriously, they are the worst.
I was surprised by how gory and creepy this one was. For whatever reason, I wasn’t expecting that.
If you're at all squeamish about gore, probably want to skip this one!
But all you horror fans out there, you will NOT want to miss this! I can definitely see this ending up on my top books of 2020.
Thanks to @netgalley and @quirkbooks for an early review copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book somehow manages to perfectly capture 90's nostalgia, the social complexities of relationships between genders, classes and races in the southern US, all while telling an incredibly captivating and suspenseful story that I couldn't put down. Highly recommend!