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

THE SOUTHERN BOOK CLUB’S GUIDE TO SLAYING VAMPIRES | Grady Hendrix
04.07.2020 | Quirk Books
Rating: 5/5 stars

Patricia Campbell has always wanted a big life, but ended up giving up her nursing career in order to marry an ambitious doctor and become a mother. She now finds herself living a life that feels small. The days seem to stretch on, her children are ungrateful, she’s taking care of her ailing mother-in-law, and her husband has grown distant. Patricia’s saving grace is her book club, a group of Charleston stay-home-moms who share a mutual love for true crime and suspenseful reads. When things in their neighborhood start to get weird after the appearance of a stranger and several missing local children, the book club decides to investigate. What they find is a terrifying truth.

I absolutely adored Grady Hendrix’s book MY BEST FRIEND’S EXORCISM and when I saw he had a new book hitting shelves, I knew I needed to get my hands on a copy as quickly as possible! 

THE SOUTHERN BOOK CLUB’S GUIDE TO SLAYING VAMPIRES is a realistic horror story made plausible through the use of an amazing cast of characters! Leading the charge of this story is Patricia Campbell, who represents the average housewife stereotype from the 1990’s. You can feel the expectations placed on Patricia by her husband, her children, and the Southern culture of Charleston, South Carolina. The day to day tensions of life in the Campbell house help to drive the plot along with Patricia’s phenomenal book club! Someone sign me up to hang out with this cast of characters!

Hendrix continually uses secondary characters to round out his stories. Without Patricia’s book club friends this story just wouldn’t have worked. There are tense and heartwarming moments between the entire cast of characters that truly work to make the story well-rounded. This book isn’t just about the creepy moments, but also about those individuals experiencing the terrors of the story. For me as a reader this type of character development and connection is truly what makes books work for me. I need to be able to relate and form bonds with those I’m reading about and that’s exactly what Hendrix provides in this book.

But what about the scares? Oh they’re there! Hendrix has quite the knack for some creepy moments in his stories and this book is nothing different in that regard. There are a lot of cringe worthy scenes, but Hendrix withholds from making anything feel over-the-top or using gore for the sake of gore. I love that there is also a mixture of comedy throughout this story that offsets the horror in a perfectly complementary manner. 

If you’re looking for a mixture of dark and humor, this book needs to be on your TBR!

This book is available to buy from: Amazon | Book Depository

A huge thank you to Quirk Books for my free copy!

Disclosure: What Jess Reads is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. This in no way influences my opinion of the above book.