#BookReview ‘The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires’ by Grady Hendrix

About the book…

Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias meet Dracula in this Southern-flavored supernatural thriller set in the ’90s about a women’s book club that must protect its suburban community from a mysterious and handsome stranger who turns out to be a blood-sucking fiend.

Patricia Campbell had always planned for a big life, but after giving up her career as a nurse to marry an ambitious doctor and become a mother, Patricia’s life has never felt smaller. The days are long, her kids are ungrateful, her husband is distant, and her to-do list is never really done. The one thing she has to look forward to is her book club, a group of Charleston mothers united only by their love for true-crime and suspenseful fiction. In these meetings, they’re more likely to discuss the FBI’s recent siege of Waco as much as the ups and downs of marriage and motherhood.

But when an artistic and sensitive stranger moves into the neighborhood, the book club’s meetings turn into speculation about the newcomer. Patricia is initially attracted to him, but when some local children go missing, she starts to suspect the newcomer is involved. She begins her own investigation, assuming that he’s a Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy. What she uncovers is far more terrifying, and soon she–and her book club–are the only people standing between the monster they’ve invited into their homes and their unsuspecting community.

HUGEST of thanks to the amazing team at Quirk Books for my gifted review copy of another anticipated read, the insanely exciting, ‘The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires’ by Grady Hendrix

Here,all of Grady’s key note features are in play-horror, fear,and menace all wrapped in a vintage world view when the world was a different place

Using the book titles that the club read as chapter headers is pure genius. It reminds you of the central concept of the novel which is an outcasts book group

Beginning with a death,the worst kind of death in a Southern society, that of social suicide by not reading the chosen novel of the Literary Group of Mount Pleasant,a book group run by Marjorie Fretwell, the book club of the title sets itself up in opposition of what should be read and plumps for what can be read.

Lead protagonist Patty sees this group as the one highlight in her month where she embraces camaraderie, support and drunken kinship with her fellow Old Village wives. These are women who read the books that they choose democratically, and by their readability,rather than their worthiness.

At this point Patty exists as a conduit to her husband and de facto leader of her home,responsible for the smooth running of the lives of her husband,children and mother in law as well as the dog. It’s as if she lives in a fugue state where she has forgotten her professional qualification of being a nurse,and yet does not complain that her individuality is being squashed by the monotony of her daily life.

Following a bizarre attack but a previously not well thought of,but not violent neighbour, Patty becomes acquainted with this woman’s nephew. His strangeness and exotic regard excites a part of her she had forgotten existed and she brings him to the bookclub. Her elderly mother in law somehow recognizes him as the man responsible for killing her husband but this is written off as senility talking.

However, when Patty gets Miss Mary talking,the tale she tells of deals with the devil and missing children seems all too real..

“Nightwalking men always have a hunger on them,”she croaked “They never stop taking and they don’t know about enough. They mortgaged their souls away and now they eat and eat and never know how to stop “

Is James Harris all he seems? Intelligent, if a little overly solicitous towards the book club women,yet cursed with an illness that prevents him going out in daylight, he seems exotic and yet disturbingly predatory. And for these fiercely bonded women with their predilection for true crime novels, have they read enough to be able to recognise the killer in their midst?

I love love LOVE this book. Deeply witty and yet achingly resonant with the way that the women love each other and their families,this is a dream of a book to read. It leaves you feeling very vampiric yourself as you hunger for just one more chapter before bed.

The characters are beautifully drawn, you can imagine joining the off shoot book club and reading books like ‘Helter Skelter’ and ‘The Stranger Beside Me’ without regret rather than some award winning worthy tome with no life at all to it. And I will forever be there for a writer who creates a woman that reads ‘The Bridges Of Madison County’ and considers the lead male a serial killer!! Kittu makes an extremely compelling argument for this!

Above all,this is a celebration of life, of friendship and direct nods to a horror provenance at a time when true crime was becoming a trend, matched with hat tips to the horror novels of the day. For example,the mysterious appearance of a man on Patty’s roof is paralleled with finding a copy of ‘Salem’s Lot’ on her daughter’s bedside table. It brings to mind that famous scene with Danny Glick….

It’s a love letter to the pulp fiction novel, the books which people actually read for enjoyment. I can so relate to the women not being able to read ‘Cry,The Beloved Country’ because,in all honesty,this is not my kind of book.

I like ones like this one,books which make you laugh and read bits out to your husband in bed whilst he is trying to watch the Mandalorian or argue semantics with strangers on the internet. It’s the kind of book which has a rosy glow of nostalgia to simpler times that possibly never really existed,but we hope that they did. And at a time like that which we are living in,isn’t it more important than ever to read pure,escapist books like this,rather than ones with boasting potential?

It’s gruesome,scary and witty as hell, it firmly establishes Grady Hendrix as one of our most exciting and talented horror writers and I genuinely cannot get enough.

About the author…

Grady Hendrix is the author of the novels Horrorstör, about a haunted IKEA, and My Best Friend’s Exorcism, which is like Beaches meets The Exorcist, only it’s set in the Eighties.

He’s also the jerk behind the Stoker award-winning Paperbacks from Hell, a history of the 70’s and 80’s horror paperback boom, which contains more information about Nazi leprechauns, killer babies, and evil cats than you probably need.

And he’s the screenwriter behind Mohawk, which is probably the only horror movie about the War of 1812 and the upcoming Satanic Panic.

You can listen to free, amazing, and did I mention free podcasts of his fiction on Pseudopod.

If you’re not already sick of him, you can learn all his secrets at his website.

Links-http://www.gradyhendrix.com/