The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
Follow my blog with Bloglovin
The Southern Book Club’s Guide to slaying vampires
By Grady Hendrix
![The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires: A Novel by [Grady Hendrix]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41P4EBNQtHL.jpg)
Review by Jennifer
Brief Summary
I walked into this book
thinking it was your normal run of the mill vampire book – but if this is what
you are looking for, this book is not it. A little bit of a horror, a lot of
bit of gross – this is the story of a mother trying to protect her children
from the dangers of a newcomer (aka vampire) in Charleston, SC. Set in the
early/mid-nineties, she and her book club friends set out to protect their
children from the vampire who has slowly ingratiated himself into their lives.
At least that’s what it is on the surface.
Hendrix’s story explores the roles of women in a
man’s world. Often seen as being easily misguided and given to exaggeration,
the heroine of the story ends up being right, despite her husband and the other
men in the book telling her and her book club friends she was imagining
everything.
Hendrix also explores the helplessness of a parent
as the world changes around them. It seems no matter how hard the heroine and
the other book club members tried, they could not stop this insidious presence
from overtaking their lives and that of their children (at least for a time).
Overall, the writing was clear and the story
concise, but I found two things that weren’t my style. First, the pacing of the
story was set to crawling speed, at least until the last quarter of the book
where it moved along quite nicely. Secondly, the characters felt flat and
underdeveloped. Whether intentional or not, I felt more connected with the
point of the book than anything the character was going through.
The best part of the book was the location. A
native South Carolinian, Charleston is my favorite spot to vacation. I was
thrilled every time I came across a landmark I was familiar with in the book.
Quotes Worth Remembering
“He thinks we’re what we look like on the outside:
nice Southern ladies. Let me tell you something… there’s nothing nice about
Southern ladies.”
“Think of us what you will," she thought,
"we made mistakes, and probably scarred our children for life, and we
froze sandwiches, and forgot carpool, and got divorced. But when the time
came, we went the distance.”
FIND SIMILAR BOOKS
-
Dracula
by Bram Stoker – if you want to try the classic Vampire story
-
The
Vampire Diaries by L. J. Smith – if you want to try a teen romance take on
vampires
-
Interview
with the Vampire by Anne Rice – if you want to try Vampire horror from the
90s
-
The Anita
Blake Series by Laurell K. Hamilton – if you want to try an unconventional
romance take on vampires
STAR RATING
I would give this book three out of five stars.
I made the mistake of reading the forward before I
read the book, so the natural theme and plot were already revealed to me
before I opened it to the first page. If you want the mystery, I strongly
recommend that you don’t read the forward until after you’ve read the book.
Also, Hendrix’s use of rats in the story is extreme.
If you have musophobia (I had to look this word up), fear of rats, avoid this
book.
Follow my blog with Bloglovin