I like to make a point to review horror for October. The genre is harder for me to read than usual this year, but I am glad that I read The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix.
The story centers on Patricia Campbell, a nurse turned stay-at-home mom in an upper-middle-class South Carolina community in the 1990s. As the book opens, Patricia’s life revolves around caring for her children and ailing mother-in-law and forming bonds with a group of women with similar backgrounds through a book club primarily reading lurid true crime books.
When the stranger James Harris rolls into town, she does her best to give him a warm Southern welcome. When a string of mysterious deaths and disappearances begins and the man’s backstory repeatedly changes, she grows suspicious. She thinks that he might be a serial killer like Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy. What she discovers is even more shocking.
Hendrix has been building a reputation in the horror genre with novels like My Best Friend’s Exorcism and We Sold Our Souls. With this as his newest work, that reputation can only keep growing. The plot is a skillful build and release of tension with a properly cathartic ending. Both physical and psychological horror come into play with characters facing both attacks by stronger and relentless opponents and the equal helplessness of being maneuvered into a situation where they have no chance of convincing anyone that they are telling the truth. This book is a reminder. The fight to protect what is most precious to us will never be easy, and we can only win by working together.
Availability: Book; eBook & eAudiobook in cloudLibrary
Rating: **** Stars (I really liked it) Reviewer: Catherine, Cataloging Librarian
ARE YOU AND THIS BOOK A GOOD MATCH? DISCOVER MORE WITH NOVELIST APPEALS! The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires
AWARDS: LibraryReads Favorite: 2020
GENRE: Horror; Southern Fiction
THEME: Suburban Malaise (Characters feeling alienated, bored, or otherwise disenchanted with life struggle to understand what went wrong in their quest for the American Dream.); Vampire Menace (Garlic-challenged bloodsuckers feature prominently in these horror stories.)
TONE: Atmospheric; Creepy; Gruesome; Menacing
WRITING STYLE: Compelling
CHARACTER: Large Cast of Characters
STORYLINE: Intricately Plotted
LOCATION: South Carolina
TIME PERIOD: 1990s
SUBJECT: Book Clubs; Good & Evil; Homemakers; Married Women; Mothers; Protectiveness in Women; Racism; Sexism; Strangers; Suburban Life; Vampires
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