Book Review: “The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires” by Grady Hendrix

Oct 6

Håfa adai and welcome to spooky season, my favorite month of the year! Throughout October 2024, I will publish reviews for works of horror, suspense, and the supernatural. My second spooky pick for the month is The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, by Grady Hendrix.

This book review consists of two parts: a spoiler-free plot summary and my thoughts on the story. In the second part, I give my personal rating and break down the setting and worldbuilding, storytelling, cast of characters, and themes. There may be some lightweight spoilers—such as how characters interact with each other and the world around them—but I will not give away any major plot twists or endings. I want to share my opinions of the book and maybe encourage you to purchase a copy of your own.

Click on the tags at the bottom of this post to see all reviews with the same tags in the Horror bookshelf.

Spoiler-Free Plot Summary

Patricia Campbell’s world is quite small. She is a housewife. Her husband Carter spends most of his time at work. Her two kids, Korey and Blue, are teenagers now and no longer want to spend time with their mother. She has been tasked with taking care of her mother-in-law who is declining from Alzheimer’s disease. Her to-do list somehow only ever gets longer and longer. And she should have been looking forward to presenting this month’s book club selection at the upcoming meeting, but she forgot to read the book.

Patricia needs a change. No more stiff book club with rigid rules. She’s forming a new book club with some friends that focuses solely on murder mysteries. Perhaps this is what she needed! Then one night after book club, she is violently attacked by her elderly neighbor. It’s one thing to read about attacks in a novel, but no one wants that to happen in real life. Right? But the changes around her only get more bizarre and unexplainable once James Harris, the nephew of her elderly assailant, shows up in the neighborhood.

Important Trigger Warning for The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires

Scenes where the vampire “feeds” on victims entail sexual assault. Additionally, Chapter 33 centers the retelling of sexual assault experienced by one of the characters. These scenes are not essential to the plot. You can skip these scenes as well as all of Chapter 33. If you do choose to read or listen through them, and if these would cause you distress or discomfort in any way, then please make sure to take necessary steps to prepare and protect yourself before and after reading this book.

My Thoughts on The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires: 2.5 stars

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires takes places in Charleston, South Carolina, during the early to mid 1990s, in the same “universe” as the characters in Grady Hendrix’s 2016 book My Best Friend’s Exorcism. But the dynamic between the characters and their environment gives the impression that the setting is more akin to the 1950s than the 1990s. And although there is such a thing as giving too much background or explanation, I would have liked to know a bit more about the origins, history, and powers of the vampire. That being said, Grady Hendrix does provide vivid detail of the social reality Patricia Campbell and the other characters must walk through.

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires is told from a third-person perspective closely following the experiences, thoughts, and feelings of Patricia Campbell. The pacing of the story drew out the suspense while also creating anxiety. Considering that this book is classified as horror, I wonder how different the experience of reading or listening to it would have been if it was written from the first-person perspective of Patricia. Seeing the horror through Patricia’s eyes might have given a darker tone to the story’s themes.

Central themes to the unfolding plot are systems of racism and structures of misogyny. Would the press have cared if the missing and dying kids were White instead of Black? Would the police have taken the concerns seriously if they came from men in certain professions instead of from housewives in a book club? Absolutely yes! A great amount of the tension throughout the first and second act of the story is built within the characters’ respective and/or intersectional experiences with racism and misogyny. By the third act, these two themes take a slight backseat to the creation of a cult community. I felt that the cult theme was underdeveloped in earlier parts of the story so much so that it seems sort of silly by the time it comes to the forefront.

An additional part of the storytelling that I must point out relates to the trigger warning I provide above: the use of sexual assault as a plot device. In the context of this story, I felt that the use of sexual assault was grossly gratuitous. The way in which the vampire feeds on his victims could have been described in many other ways. The way in which a character was attacked (as retold in Chapter 33) could have happened in many other ways. These scenes and Chapter 33 cause me not to want to revisit this book.

The themes at the center of the plot give important commentary that continue to resonate today. However, I feel that the story may have been more immersive if it was told from the first-person perspective of Patricia. And I simply cannot get past sexual assault used as a plot device when many other methods would not have changed the overall story.

Patricia Campbell’s family consists of her psychiatrist husband Carter, two teenage kids (Blue and Korey), mother-in-law Mrs. Mary, and family dog Ragtag. Patricia hires Ursula Greene (Mrs. Greene) to help with the care of Mrs. Mary, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. The new book club includes fellow neighborhood housewives Grace, Slick, Kitty, and Maryellen. And then there’s James Harris.

I cannot relate to the choices Patricia and her book club make as they navigate the events going on around them. But I can understand that they are operating within the social rules they believe they have to follow. I can also understand Mrs. Greene’s shift from initial apprehension to total commitment to helping out the book club. The way Carter treats Patricia throughout the story is horrible. She is essentially gaslit by her husband from start to finish; which would have felt more intense if the story was written from Patricia’s first-person perspective. This makes the decision Patricia makes towards the end of the story quite satisfying.

At the start, we see James Harris as a mysterious and illusive figure. At the end, we see him as a charismatic and enigmatic cult leader; although the title “cult leader” is not actually assigned to him. He does not change simply because he has never had to. This is what leads to his rise and his fall. Some characters experience transformative growth by the end of the book, while others experience expansive growth. The dynamic between Patricia and the other characters is anxiety-inducing and causes stress as the story goes on. But this is a horror story, after all.

My overall rating for Grady Hendrix’s The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires is 2.5 out of 5 stars. I have very mixed feelings about The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. On the one hand, the concept is very interesting, there is an intense psychological thriller aspect to it, it presents important social commentary, and it was an enjoyable read for a good chunk of it. On the other hand, there is absolutely NO NEED for the use of sexual assault as a plot point in order for this story to have the same effect. I cannot recommend this book without giving the explicit trigger warning of how sexual assault is featured in the story. That is technically a big spoiler—and I know I try to keep my book reviews spoiler-free—but I do not like the idea of sharing my thoughts about this book without giving that away. So, would I recommend The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires? No, I would not. All of the interesting things that I enjoyed or appreciated about it were overshadowed by the unnecessary depictions of sexual assault.

Dångkulo' na' saina ma'åse'! Thank you so much for reading my review of The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix.

Rating Cheat Sheet

4.75 - 5.00 stars: Everyone should read this book! (If you’re into that sort of thing.)
4.00 - 4.50 stars: I appreciated many aspects of this book. I recommend it!
3.00 - 3.75 stars: I liked some aspects of this book. I won’t revisit it, but someone else might really like it.
2.00 - 2.75 stars: There were some things I appreciated about this book, but I do not recommend it.
0.25 - 1.75 stars: I do not recommend this book. I did not enjoy or appreciate the experience of it.

Post Date: 14 October 2024