The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix [book review]

Book: The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires

Author: Grady Hendrix

Published: April 7, 2020

Publisher: Quirk Books

Pages: 410

Genre: Horror

Souther book club’s guide to slaying vampires character list: Patricia Campbell, Korey Campbell, Carter “Blue” Campbell Jr., Carter Campbell, Slick Paley

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The Southern Book Club’s guide to Slaying Vampire book summary

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires is a horror novel by Grady Hendrix. The story takes place in South Carolina and follows Patricia Campbell. Patricia had high hopes for her life and career as a nurse, but when she gets married and has children she becomes a stay-at-home mom. She takes care of everything around the house and all she really has for herself is a book club. When a handsome man moves into the neighborhood he becomes the talk of the book club. At first, Patricia is kind of attracted to him and she’s nice to him even though she knows nothing can come of it. When children start to go missing she starts to suspect her handsome neighbor is involved. Will anyone believe her?

What I thought

So, I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about Grady Hendrix books. He has quite a bit of novel already and they all have a lot of hype around them. I think that may have been why was a little disappointed with the book. Don’t get me wrong the story is well done and well thought out. But I found the story to be really slow and could have been shortened up quite a bit.

To me, I didn’t really like Patricia all that well. I wish she was a little bit more aggressive towards her husband and towards her friends. On top of that even though her instinct was right it seems like her suspicion came out of the left field. I mean to start off with anyway. Granted he did some weird things but I kind of feel like she was stretching. At least I felt that way in the first half.

Earlier I mentioned how I wish she was more aggressive. I feel like her husband and friends kind of walked all over. I can’t even begin to explain how much her husband bothers me. He’s not very supportive and would rather believe a stranger over his own wife.

I do feel like the story could have been cut down some. There were too many slow parts which made the story drag. On top of that, a horror book with a character on the more assertive side doesn’t work well with me.

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires would probably be the perfect book for those who are wanting to try to get into horror. I suggest that because a whole lot of nothing happens until towards the end of the book.

If you like books like this then you might also like Shallow Graves.