The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

Quirk Books, 2020

ISBN-13: 9781683691433

Available: Hardback, Kindle edition, Audible audiobook

It’s the 1990s in Charleston, South Carolina. Patricia Campbell gave up her nursing career to do what proper Southern white women were expected to do: marry a successful man (in Patricia’s case, an ambitious doctor), and then soon after become a mother. She thought that with this little family she would have the perfect life. In reality, her husband spends long days and nights at work, her daughter seemingly doesn’t need her mother anymore, her son is obsessed with Nazis, and her mother-in-law, Miss Mary, who suffers from dementia, needs constant care. She can’t keep up with her to-do list, let alone finish anything. Even with a new caretaker, Mrs. Greene, in the picture, she is still overwhelmed with domestic life. She’s not alone.

Patricia joins a book club with fellow housewives Grace, Kitty, Maryellen, and Slick. They bond over true crime and domestic not-quite-bliss. In their meetings, the women indulge in conversation and friendly debate regarding the FBI’s siege of Waco, Ann Rule’s friendship with Ted Bundy before and after she discovered he was a serial killer, and more.

After one of their meetings, Patricia ventures outside in the dark to take the trash out, only to be attacked by an elderly neighbor, Mrs. Savage, who is digging through the garbage and snacking in the innards of a dead racoon. She charges and attacks Patricia, tearing off part of her ear. Patricia is left with graphic memories of the attack, as well as feeling terrible for the old woman who was responsible for it, despite her being rather disagreeable in life. Soon after, Mrs. Savage’s enigmatic and charismatic nephew, James Harris, moves into the neighborhood. Patricia is intrigued by the newcomer, especially being the first of the book club to meet him in a rather unconventional way. She notices red flags immediately, but ignores them, thinking that maybe she’s letting the true crime books get the better of her. Suddenly, the book club meeting topic changes from discussing true crime to speculating on this stranger in their midst. Everyone seems to be talking about him. Even Miss Mary has something to say about him, although she calls him by a different name and accuses him of horrible things.

Then, children on the other side of town in Six Mile, a struggling Black community, start to go missing. Police write off the cases, claiming suicides or drugs are behind the disappearances. Patricia, desperate to get to the bottom of the disappearances, makes her way into the community where her mother-in-law’s caretaker lives to get more information and discuss her suspicions about James. What she discovers as the story unfolds is that James is far more sinister than she realized, and a real monster.

The friendships depicted are strong, and they go through their ups and downs as any adult friendship does. It is refreshing to read that none of the women, or the men for that matter, are perfect, despite the culture telling them they need to be. Slick blurts out at a book club meeting that she freezes sandwiches for her children’s school lunches just to save time. Grace works to maintain order and cleanliness in her house to an agonizing degree. To get out of the house to attend the book club meetings, Slick tells her husband that it’s a Bible study group. Those are only a few examples of what is expected of the housewives.

The Southern Book Club to Slaying Vampires is a fast read, with interesting and realistic characters, a solid storyline, and well written horror with the right amount of humor mixed in. Hendrix has been a favorite author of mine since Horrorstör, and this novel does not disappoint.

Contains: blood, gore, implied domestic abuse, rats and roaches, sexual assault, dismemberment, body horror

Highly recommended

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker