The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires Review

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

⭐⭐ .5 /5

Okay, first of all, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten the title of this book right, and I’m starting to understand that was his goal. Turn it into a joke like Benedict Cumquat, and it’ll stick in their brains longer. So to make my like easier I’ll buy into and call it Southern Moms Slaying Vampires, because it’s easier for me.

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So this book, it follows several families in the small southern town called Mt. Pleasant. They live a standard Southern Stay at Home Mom life, and are becoming increasingly isolated and bored. The no longer feel joy from watching their neighborhood like a hawk, instead it’s become a dreadful unspoken expected part of their routine. So to mix it up a bit, they decided to start a book club.

Only these moms aren’t reading self-help books. They’re reading the gory murder filled books their respected husbands would gasp at. Their husbands would swoon and beg them to put down, but these moms reading these books may be the only thing that saves their precious town.

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This book was pitched to me as a horror comedy, and I was ready for it. The description immediately gave me Greener Grass vibes (which if you haven’t seen that movie PLEASE do so). So obviously I had to get it from my library ASAP. What part of a satirical horror slasher book is not directly up my alley? The answer is none of it, but most of it at the same time.

Unfortunately this book didn’t jive with me. The jokes felt flat, the satire felt like it was an afterthought throughout the book, and it felt the women were constantly flip-flopping between their given stereotypes. I’ve seen people adore this, and it makes me sad I didn’t.

I will be honest though, it had me in the first 50-70 pages. There was one scene that was enough to save this book from a 2 star rating, and bump it to a 2.5 (looking at your rats). But there was no humor element to it, and it seemed to have vanished from the story until we hit about page 150. It did have a lot of potential, but I don’t think this book was as groundbreaking as others seem to.

I also want to quickly mention some spoilers, but ones that I feel are important. So if you don’t’ want spoilers, I would stop here!

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Honestly I am disappointed with the way this book handled some of the darker, more sensitive topics. It just shoved in religion, suicide, mental illness, racism, abuse, and assault. Yes they are hard to talk about, and it’s extremely difficult to put that in a story. But I think it’s a good thing to include in literature, because they’re things that need to be talked about. What I don’t think is good it throwing it into a story for the sake of drama factor, and not using it in the plot. Maybe these things could have worked if the satire factor were more apparent, but it wasn’t. Even these things didn’t even feel like shock factor, they felt like they were meant to be shock factor, mixed with trying to normalize them, and quite possibly should have been taken out but got forgotten. My rating honestly would have been lower due to these things, but most of them were mentioned once and never again. I wouldn’t have remembered these things happened if I didn’t mark them specifically for this review.

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After looking at my review, I’m starting to question my chosen rating on 2.5 stars, but I’ll stand by that for now. It was good enough that I read it in a few days, and the few good scenes were enjoyable. I honestly wouldn’t recommend this to anyone though. I think there are better horror comedies, and satirical works out there.