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.







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Crescent City by Sarah J Maas

Image
"There was a wolf at the gallery door." Bryce Quinlan, a half-human/half-fae citizen of Crescent City, works as an antiquities dealer assistant in a witch's gallery during the day and parties hard with her friends at night (clubs, booze, drugs, the works). One fateful night she comes home to discover her friends murdered in the most gruesome manner, and her life changes dramatically.  Even though the "culprit" has been "apprehended", two years later someone's body is found in the same way her friends' were and the Archangel and Governor of CC, Micah, asks Bryce to help solve the case together with his personal assassin, Hunt (*sigh*) Athalar. Every new revelation only brings on more questions and doubt about her deceased friends, and unravels a dangerous path that goes much deeper and steeper than they had imagined.  In this adult fantasy, Maas has amassed all kinds of supernatural creatures, such as Fae, Angels, Shifters, Witc...
Read more

Descendant of the Crane by Joan He

Image
"No night was perfect for treason, but this one came close." In the Kingdom of Yan, people who can predict the future and wield magic are considered monsters, brutally hunted down and executed - as are their sympathizers - in the name of peace and justice. After her father’s suspicious death, Queen Hesina, with the help of a mysterious convict and her step-siblings, will try to find the culprit, taking the case to the Investigation Bureau for trial and placing her trust in the justice system (Spoiler Alert: Big Mistake).  Welcome to a world where everyone is wearing big, elaborate masks and hiding behind their “good intentions”. The ‘Descendant of the Crane’ is full of political intrigue and self-righteous back-stabbers, with a twisty finish, which, considering how slowly the plot developed, escalated rather quickly and made for a riveting conclusion.   This isn’t a stand-alone novel; the ending lays the groundwork for a sequel. If I'm being honest though...
Read more

Circe by Madeline Miller

Image
"Day upon patient day, you must throw out your errors and begin again. So why did I not mind? Why did none of us mind?  I  cannot speak for my brothers and sister, but my answer is easy. For a hundred generations, I had walked the world drowsy and dull, idle and at my ease. I left no prints, I did no deeds. Even those who had loved me a little did not care to stay. Then I learned that I could bend the world to my will, as a bow is bent for an arrow. I would have done that toil a thousand times to keep such power in my hands. I thought: this is how Zeus felt when he first lifted the thunderbolt." Circe, daughter of Helios and a rather pompous nymph, Perse, was born and raised in the Titans' Halls, among other rather pompous nymphs, naiads, small deities and Titans. During her slow eternity she discovers her inherent powers of witchcraft and is exiled on the island Aiaia (even though I am Greek, I still had to google how to pronounce that name), where she hones her abilitie...
Read more