Blogger Reads: The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

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Sometimes it takes a few tries before you can get something right. In this case, it was picking a book for June. Back when we posted in March, we said that our June book would be The Glass Hotel. Then for a very good reason (I don’t remember what it was, but I know it was a good one), we switched to The Jetsetters. But then Anne read The Jetsetters and felt meh about it. Coincidentally, I had been putting off reading The Jetsetters because I had been hearing “meh” things about it.

So finally we landed on a book that we had both heard of and heard good things about. And luckily, we had just enough time to read it.

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

TWO SENTENCE SUMMARY

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires is about a book club who discovers that their new neighbor might not be the kind man everyone is making him out to be. Except their attempts to out him never seem to go their way.

WHAT I LIKED MOST AND WHAT FRUSTRATED ME

I went into this book knowing that I am 100% not a vampires novel person. They just aren’t my jam. Witches? Cool. Ghosts? Why not? Vampires? Hard pass. But what I liked most about this book was that it didn’t feel like a vampires novel. It felt like it could have been completely normal, every day contemporary fiction (even though it takes place in the 90s)…and oh yeah, there happens to be a character that may or may not be a vampire (he definitely was). It was still completely weird, don’t get me wrong, but I completely enjoyed it.

What frustrated me didn’t really frustrated me. It was more that I could have done without some of the more graphic scenes. There weren’t that many (phew) and luckily I was able to skim those few passages. But I’m not a really a blood person (I can’t even watch bloody scenes in movies) and there was a decent amount of it in these passages. (And this is probably why I’ve stayed away from vampire novels. Everything makes sense now!)

FAVORITE QUOTE(S)

(Sorry, this was a book of good quotes and I had a few favorites)

Then she got in her Volvo and hoped Grace was right and this was all just a product of the overactive imagination of a stupid little housewife with too much free time on her hands. If it was, she promised herself, tomorrow she would vacuum her curtains.
Grady Hendrix, The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires

He thinks we’re what we look like on the outside: nice Southern ladies. Let me tell you something…there’s nothing nice about Southern ladies.
Grady Hendrix, The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires

“You’d rather get stabbed forty-one times than ruin the curb appeal of your home?” Maryellen asked.
“Yes,” Grace said.”
Grady Hendrix, The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires

“The police think all kind of things,” Mrs. Greene said. “Doesn’t necessarily make them true.”
Grady Hendrix, The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires

RECOMMENDED FOR

I would recommend this for anyone who enjoys books with gossipy neighbors. I don’t think that’s a genre, but it really should be. If you love horror stories (not my preferred genre, but you do you girl), you’ll also enjoy this one.

If you would like somewhere to go after this, I would actually suggest reading The Stepford Wives. The novel (not the movie with Glen Close and Matthew Broderick) is creepy and has that housewife/controlling man vibe that this book definitely has as well.