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

"This story ends in blood." 


Patricia lives the boring, diligent housewife life with kids in the suburbs and most days she really is on flight mode. Her greatest passion is the ladies only, 'not-quite-a-book-club' book club where she and her fellow clubbers indulge in gory murder stories. 
Enter: mysterious, tall, blond stranger, James Harris, who comes out of nowhere, charms everyone and integrates himself into their little peaceful community. But his arrival marks the start to a series of odd incidents and things get more serious when children in a poor, squalid area of town start dying under mysterious circumstances, their deaths taken less than seriously by the local authorities. That is when Patricia puts one plus one together and discovers the unfathomable truth about everyone's favorite, new neighbor... Well, she was a bit suspicious from the beginning but, you know, James is really handsome.

This book frustrated me to no end, that is to say, I enjoyed it to no end. It is a thriller with a monster doing monstrosities, however, the real villains here are the husbands. Specifically, Patricia's. The novel is set in 90's Southern American suburbs, in a patriarchal community where the meek, little housewife does nothing all day but vapid, little chores and the glorified husband is all day at work, all to provide for his family and certainly NOT for his own ambitions and personal gain. The husband is constantly absent or exasperating with his wife's "silliness", he patronizes her at every chance and values a stranger more than his own wife, because, as he mansplained, James looks like a "stand-up guy" (and has money etc). Any evidence Patricia might have against James Harris is discarded as the fantasies of a bored housewife with an overactive imagination. 

With the monster roaming free to attack children in a poor, black community and no one batting an eye about it, it's up to the ladies of 'not-quite-a-book-club' to save the day while their husbands bask in their oblivious bubble of arrogance and entitlement.

Despite this being some gruesome fiction, it projects some true ideas. The characters are real, every-day people, with real, every-day problems (notwithstanding the creepy monster among them). Female friendship is presented with honesty. The truth about racial injustice cannot be ignored as it is one of the reasons our murderer goes undetected for so long. 
My favorite thing about this book, however, is the big role books play in it and the fact that the "housewives" were brought together by "trashy true crime" paperbacks.     


      My ratings:
Plot: 4/5
Conclusion: 5/5
Characters: 5/5
Movie Potential: 5/5


'Who should play them in the movie' :




January Jones as Patricia Campbell







Alexander Skarsgard as James Harris






Do you agree with my casting? 
Please leave your own suggestions below in the comments.







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