The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix Review!

 Hi ForeverBookers, 

How are you all? I hope you’re well. I’m sorry I haven’t posted in a long time. I’ve been busy but I have still been reading! I’ve finished “The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires” by Grady Hendrix, and I surprisingly enjoyed it quite a lot. Is it the best book I’ve read, no, but does it have some shocks, twists and things I didn’t see coming, YES!!! 

3 Stars!

“The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires” is a story that surprised me. I thought it would be more focused around the book club but it isn’t. It’s more so based around the lives of the members of the book club.  

I read “The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires” for a few readathons. They were: 

Reading Rivalry - Historical Fantasy - it’s set throughout the last 3 decades of the 1900’s and as the title suggests a vampiric creature is involved in the plot.

Popsugar Reading Challenge 2022 - A Social-Horror book - I’m taking that as a book that has the social aspect but is also a horror. This book was certainly horrific towards the end! 

“The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires” is an adult book! It has some rather gross descriptions in the middle and especially towards the end!

Spoilers Below

“They selected the books Marjorie wrote down for them, assigned each book to the month Marjorie thought best, and picked the discussants Marjorie thought were most appropriate. The discussant would open the meeting by delivering a twenty-minute presentation on the book, its background, and the life of its author, then lead the group discussion. A discussant could not cancel or trade books with anyone else without paying a stiff fine because the Literary Guild of Mt. Pleasant was not fooling around.

When it became clear she wasn’t going to be able to finish Cry, the Beloved Country, Patricia called Marjorie.

“Marjorie,” she said over the phone while putting a lid of on the rice and turning it down from a boil. “It’s Patricia Campbell. I need to talk to you about Cry, the Beloved Country.”

“Such a powerful work,” Marjorie said.

“Of course,” Patricia said. 

“I know you’ll do it justice,” Marjorie said.

“I’ll do my best,” Patricia said, realizing that this was the exact opposite of what she needed to say.

“And it’s so timely with the situation on South Africa right now,” Marjorie said.

A cold bolt of fear shot through Patricia: what was the situation on South Africa right now?

After she hung up, Patricia cursed herself for being a coward and a fool, and vowed to go to the library and look up Cry, the Beloved Country in the Directory of World Literature, but she had to do snacks for Korey’s soccer team…” 

This is significant as it’s what starts the main event of the story, I feel — the book club. Everything stems from the book club, so without it there wouldn’t be a story. Patricia, our main character, hasn’t had time to read the book she was assigned by the head of the book club, snotty, hard-nosed Marjorie so she calls to tell her that, but chickens out. I found this entertaining. Because Marjorie is soooo hard-nosed she doesn’t like how Patricia wasn’t able to finish the book when she can’t talk in depth about it a few pages later, and so Patricia leaves the club. Her friends at the club don’t like how Patricia has left, so they quit and then form their own book club.

“Listen.” Kitty placed her body between the two of them and Marjorie’s front door, just in case Marjorie was watching and could read lips. “I’m having some people read a book and come over to my house next month to talk about it. Maryellen’ll be there.”

“I couldn’t possibly find the time to belong to two book clubs,” Patricia said. 

“Trust me,” Kitty said. “After today, Marjorie’s book club is done.”

This is Kitty, one of Patricia’s friends from the old book club, Kitty, saying that Marjorie’s book club is DONE! No one wants to be a part of it now. We only hear about a few people from that book club, though. They join Patricia’s book club. Kitty, Slick and Maryellen are the characters that join it. The plot really starts at page 74, where the character James Harris enters the story. James is a mystery to begin with. I wasn’t sure what to think of him at first. However, as the story continued it’s obvious that James is indeed the villain of the story. The way the author never referred to him as just James but always James Harris gave that away too. 

“Beneath him, a young black girl lay sprawled on the floor, long orange T-shirt pushed up to her stomach, legs akimbo, an ugly dark purple mark on the inside of one thigh, oily with fluids.”

This is the first time that I saw James as the villain of “The Southern Bookclub’s Guide To Slaying Vampires.” He’s sucking the blood from a young girl. He kills children of Six Mile, an area of Louisiana in the book. Mrs. Greene is a woman that suspects James of killing the children before it’s revealed. Patricia cottons on to this belief and starts to think the same of James Harris. James is known as “James Harris” from page 74 until the end of the novel. This is how I knew he was a significant character. If he’d been called just James, I feel it would have added to the mystery surrounding him. I thought the author focused on telling us WHO the villain was too early!

Patricia is the character we get to know the most in the novel. We get to know her husband, Carter who annoyed me if I’m being honest and her children, Korey and Blue too, but only briefly. Blue is a young boy who is quite inquisitive. He wants to know everything. Korey, on the other hand is more closed off. She is quiet and we never know what she’s thinking. Patricia’s children and husband aren’t a huge part of the plot but they’re present throughout and become significant at times.  

A huge part of “The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires” is trying to persuade the members of the book club that James is evil. It’s only Patricia and Mrs. Greene, a cleaner from Six Mile, where the children have gone missing, that believe that James is evil! Everyone else thinks he’s innocent at first. When do they start to see James for who he truly is? Is James even the evil character he’s made out to be? Or is he innocent? You’ll have to read for yourself! 

If there’s a negative part to “The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires” or something that I didn’t enjoy it was the writing style. I honestly thought the plot could have been written in half the pages. It was very wordy to me, which it really didn’t need to be. 

Overall, I enjoyed “The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires.” It wasn’t everything I wanted, but the intrigue was certainly enough to keep me reading. That’s why I’m giving it 3 stars. If you want a good mystery with lots of twists and turns, then I highly suggest this book! I read this over the Halloween period, and it was perfect as it takes place then too. There are parts of the book that I haven’t mentioned in this review but I’ve summed up the significant points. 

Stand by for my next review, coming soon!