So fun! Fried Green Tomatoes meets Twilight? This is a perfect read for your book clubs - lots to discuss and so many good moments to pour over.

**I received an advanced reader's copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review**

Hendrix pays homage to Southern ladies' book clubs in this horror novel set in the late 1980s/early 1990s. What happens when a group of women begin reading true crime books for their monthly book club meetings? And, what happens when the new guy in town just may have some sinister secrets?

Parts gory and parts laugh out loud humorous, Hendrix shows a lady can be genteel while talking murder and blood; not to mention, a lady knows what to do in even the most grotesque situations. While this is not my usual genre of choice, the humor of this novel carried me through. I was engaged the entire time and had to keep flipping the page to see what happens next. I've already recommended this to a few people I know!

Grady Hendrix perfectly captures the oppressive SC summer heat, Southern suburbia, and 90s nostalgia in this horrifyingly captivating novel. A group of housewives in Mount Pleasant gather monthly for a true crime-themed book club and our protagonist Patricia wishes something more exciting would happen in their lives, but when James Harris, a charmingly handsome man moves into the neighborhood, Patricia is attacked, children begin to go missing, and even more bizarre events start to happen. Patricia knows James isn’t the charismatic man everyone makes him out to be, but how can she convince anyone to take her seriously? Slightly satirical and delightfully disturbing, this is not your typical vampire book. As Hendrix lets you know from the beginning, this one ends in blood.

Grady Hendrix does it again with this domestic vampire novel set in the 90's and the same universe as "My Best Friend's Exorcism." This story is about the lengths a mother will go to to protect her children. I really enjoyed the characters and thought they were well developed. I tore through this book!

4.5 stars
“I wanted to pit Dracula against my Mom, as you’ll see its not a fair fight” Heck yes! With a quote like that my expectations were high. The Southern Book Clubs Guide to Slaying Vampires did not disappoint. I admit I was going into The Southern Book Clubs Guide to Slaying Vampires thinking it was going to be this campy little vampire book reminiscent of Fright Night which there is nothing wrong with that. In this case I am glad I was wrong. Yes, TSBCGSV has its fun moments come on it features a group of middle age women in book club I would be disappointed if it did not. But The Southern Book Clubs was also darker and gorier than I thought. There were some rage moments when the women had their ideas and concerns pushed aside and gaslighted, the author did an amazing job pointing out people’s opinions of women. Let us not forget about the ending, exceptional.
Overall, The Southern Book Clubs Guide to Slaying Vampires is a gripping, intense and fun horror novel. As well as being an excellent vampire book.

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix The author has a flare for descriptive passages and creating dysfunctional characters, The story is creepy, weird, bloody, gory and so not a book for me, Then the RATS!!! Just could not get past them. A sure hit for those into the vampire genre looking for a quirky twist.

Thank you to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for the opportunity to preview the book.

Charleston, South Carolina in the 90’s… Spanish moss, cicadas singing while ladies sip sweet tea at their weekly book clubs. This is where we meet Patricia Campbell. Her life seems to be shrinking and suffocating her. Her husband is never home with his busy medical practice, her two teenagers can’t pull away from her fast enough and her senile mother-in-law lives with them and needs 24 hour care. She is bored and feels she has no purpose. Her only outlet is her book club with friends where they read and discuss true crime cases.
It was after one of these book club meetings that Patricia is viciously attacked by an elderly neighbor and her life instantly becomes anything but ordinary!
I love how the author spins a magical southern spell around you with a captivating story and then BAM you are suddenly terrified and double checking your locks and closing your blinds! The story mixes gothic fantasy and horror with (trigger warning) realistic crimes against children and sprinkled with race and women’s issues all into one delicious book that you can’t stop reading!
I loved this book! I felt Patricia and her friends were very relatable. I would love to hear more about these ladies and their adventures. Some deeper character development would be interesting to me. The author touched on some of their background and hinted at richer characters were there, just not uncovered yet. I feel their town also has many interesting characters with stories to tell. I would like to see the author expand on the characters and the town that has been created. The author had an interesting way of bringing real issues into this fantastical story. I would like to see more details on the racism issues of the time and expand more on those characters we briefly meet.
If you would enjoy a mix of Skeeter (The Help) and Buffy (The Vampire Slayer) as a main character and follow her along through a hilarious and horrifying tale, this is the book for you!

Fabulous and terrifying. I am not a horror fan, so this is probably my one horror book this year and if you're only going to read one, this is the one. Patricia and the rest of the southern ladies are both your everyday women and total superheroes. Wait, you see that too, right? The book kept tricking me into complacency when I would get caught up in the southern women being southern and laugh out loud, and the next minute I would be sorry I read that chapter in a dark room in the middle of the night. Grady Hendrix is a new favorite, but I'll have to wait til next year to read another.

If hanging out with women in a true crime book club during the 90’s sounds fun to you, I recommend reading this book! What a fun escape- I really had a fantastic time with Patricia, Kitty, Slick, Maryellen, and Grace. The true crime book club is the start of close friendships between the very different women and ultimately the beginning of the end of their normal lives. When a mysterious stranger moves in, things get a lot more interesting. I really enjoyed the 90’s nostalgia, the escapism, and the story of undervalued, underestimated women who finally win a round. I will absolutely recommend this book to my library patrons!

When I first started reading this novel I was truly excited, but after about 50 pp I was no longer interested in reading it (there are too many on my TBR list!) However, I WILL recommend it to customers at my library branch because I do recognize its value and know many who would love it. It just wasn't for me.

Let me start by saying I really did enjoy the book and I would recommend it. It’s an easy read that goes quickly and I never felt like I wanted to stop reading despite some of the characters in the book. That gets to what I didn’t care for. The husbands in the book are all garbage, which is the nicest, least profanity laced thing I can say about them. Seriously, they all deserve throat punches. There were times reading the book I thought surely this I set in the 60s not the 90s but no, the husbands are just throwbacks to a worse time. I don't want to give too much of the plot away but I can sympathize with the main character who suspects something terrible is happening but is told by everyone that she’s confusing the true crime books they read in their monthly book club with reality. Of course she’s right, but it takes awhile to convince anyone to help her. Overall, it’s a good summer read.

Another win for Hendrix. The Southern Book Club is fiercely feminist, self-aware satire that also happens to be extremely entertaining. Be wary if you’re triggered by body horror. Though race relations in the south can be a delicate subject for some, Hendrix drives the point home in a way that any fragile white reader can understand—The disproportionate amount of black children going missing without any news coverage versus white children dominating the airwaves is genuinely horrific, and STILL a problem.

This was just the book I needed for this crazy season of life - funny, thoughtful, scary, and heartbreaking. The misogyny of the men in the book got to me at first until I realized that behavior was the point. This group of women had to find their own voice and way to become the heroes of their own story. And boy are they heroes in the end. Loved.

I have read many vampire stories and this one hits the sweet spot between taking itself too seriously and being ridiculously campy. Enjoyable, with just enough history to tell the story but not get bogged down, and just enough humor to recognize and enjoy the fun without taking you over the top.

The characters get away with a lot of exposition in the name of southern hospitality, and not being a southerner myself, I enjoyed the way these book club members took it upon themselves to settle scores, clean each other's houses, nose into their neighbor's business, and keep silent when appropriate.

There is a running theme of husbands/men controlling wives/women throughout the story that was troubling. The moral of the story seems to be that if everyone had listening to the women when they originally spoke up, many of the bad things that occurred over the course of many years wouldn’t have happened. The good old boys club mentality thus plays its own role in the horror of the story as well, as lives are forever changed not just by the vampire.

Yet, it isn’t just the men who test their relationships. Some the women fall out of friendship, fall in line with the men, fall back into friendship, or are otherwise drafted back. The relationships of the women in the original book club rearrange themselves as well as they are tested and drawn into the mystery of the vampire. Each member finds a way to contribute what she can to bring about the end, and the fact that they give so much to each other and their families is just a reminder of the unknown struggles many women go through in the course of a day to save their worlds.

Such a fun read. Perfect pick for my murderino book club next month! Great mystery, suspense, and all around delightful to read.

Not sure if it was because I read an early release, but there were a few moments where I got lost as to where we were and some characters seemed to know things that they hadn't been told. Also, there's a bit of a magical negro character might have been handled a little better.

I didn't not finish this book as it had more horror elements as part of the novel than expected. Despite the subject, the authors writing was easy to follow, built characters with great detail, and created a great deal of suspense for readers to look forward too.

An excellent addition to the library of vampire lore. This book does not pretty up the monsters or the heroines while at the same time paying tribute to the stay at home moms who are watching out for their families. Hendrix skillfully combines vampire lore including the insect like suckers from Guillermo Del Toro, to the old school dusty monsters from Stephen King and Bram Stoker, and sex crazed pretty boys from Charlaine Harris and Laurell K. Hamilton.

I’ve read and enjoyed all of Grady Hendrix’s work, but this one was really something special. From the very beginning of the novel, he brought in characters who were real and relatable. There was humor, family drama, southern etiquette, and the horror element was a very slow build - but once it got there, it was truly horrific. Excellent work; I’ll be recommending it to anyone who will listen.

Occasionally you will come across books that are hard to catagorize and this is one of them. It’s most definitely horror, but there is also humor and social commentary all through it.

A women’s book club in the 90s moves from “important” literature to true crime books and then a vampire moves to town. What then follows is one woman’s quest to convince her friends and her husband that danger is lurking next door and out to get their kids.

When the book hits horror, it hits skin-crawling horror. When it looks into feminism or cultural divide, it really does that too. It’s like Steel Magnolias and It and Stepford Wives and Dracula combined.

Hendrix does it again!

I seem to say this a lot about authors I enjoy and from whom I happily anticipate new releases, but I mean it this time! Grady Hendrix writes horror-comedy novels, one of the few types of horror novels I enjoy reading. When I heard he wrote a vampire novel, I just couldn’t wait to pick it up. This was absolutely enjoyable and the women around who he focuses the story are awesome, kick-butt, mothers and wives who know how to take down creatures of the night, thanks in part to the grim titles they read in their book club.