🎧AUDIOBOOK REVIEW🎧

Bless Your Heart - Lindy Ryan
Rating: 5/5 ⭐️

“A crackling mystery-horror novel with big-hearted characters and Southern charm with a bite, Bless Your Heart is a gasp-worthy delight from start to finish from debut author Lindy Ryan.”

I absolutely loved this story of 4 generations of women who run the only funeral home in their small town. The Evans women were charming, funny badasses and I truly hope there will be more books to come from this series. I wouldn’t describe this as horror (though there are a few gory parts) but more paranormal mystery.

Recommend if you like:
- Multiple POVs
- Strong women
- Paranormal mystery
- Dark humor
- 90’s references
- Southern charm

Thank you @stmartinspress and @macmillan.audio for my copies!

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book before release day. Unfortunately it was a DNF at 20% for me. Might just be me and the current theme isn't vibing with me. I might try it again come fall/spooky season.

If you liked A Southern Bookclub's Guide to Slaying Vampires - but need something a little more upbeat - try your hand at Bless Your Heart by Lindy Ryan. Southern women are a different breed, and if you get four generations of them together to save a town from ruthless creatures - you're bound for a good time!

A bit more gruesome than I anticipated, but also satirical! A fun read for anyone who likes the idea of a non-sparkly vampire, Steel Magnolias-esque women and small towns.

**Thank you to St. Martin's Press, Minotaur Books & NetGalley for the advanced reader copy. I received this book for free, but all thoughts are my own. – SLR 🖤

I loved the idea behind this! It was entertaining and was hard to put down because I wanted to find out what was going on. My only issue is that the pacing was very slow at times. I still give it 4 stars based on plot and creativity

Aaaah this was such a fun read! I wasn't sure what I was getting into, but the surprises (and laughs) kept coming. The Evans women run the local funeral home in their small town... but what the reader soon learns is they do much more than that. The Strigoi, or vampires, are back, and it is their job to deal with them. From the youngest, who's in high school, to an 80=something grandparent, these badass women have to take care of business. I imagine the audiobook would be super fun, too. I highly recommend!

💛❤️ Bless Your Heart ARC Review ❤️💛

Thank you so much to Lindy Ryan and Minotaur Books for the opportunity to read and review this book!

Bless Your Heart is a supernatural small town mystery. The Evans women run the local funeral home in their small town in Southeast Texas. When people start dying mysteriously, they realize that the Strigoi have come to small town Texas. Can these women fight back and protect their town??

This was an interesting read. It mainly focused on the generational story of the Evans family - their ages ranging from high school to 80s - who have been fighting monsters for decades. The world building was fun and I enjoyed the supernatural aspects of this story. I still had some questions at the end of the story, but I anticipate those will be answered in the next books in the series.

Overall this was a solid three star read for me. Interesting characters and world building, but I did find myself struggling keeping characters straight with all the different POV changes. There was a smidge of a romance plot between two of the characters but no on page smut, so one flame for spice

If you’re a fan of small town vibes, supernatural mysteries, monster hunters and vampire lore, then absolutely pick this one up!

Please Note: review will be posted on Amazon upon publication

I didn't know quite what to expect when I decided to request "Bless Your Heart". This novel took a unique strategy to tell a story of creatures who have been mythologized in literature for ages.
This story is a blend of horror and one of family. For many years the Evans women, (all 4 generations), have carried out a quiet crusade to rid their small part of southeast Texas from the undead. Isolated and eccentric the Evans women have been the operators of the only funeral home in their home town for nearly 16 years. United because of circumstances the Evans and the local sheriff are the only ones who know of the existence of the original vampire, the Strigoi.
Soon, more and more townspeople are turning up missing or dead in a most heinous way, and town Deputy Roger Taylor tries to desperately come up with an explanation or even better, a way to stop the killing.
Unknown to the teenager in the Evans family, Luna, this has occurred before when she was just a baby, and she may be the cause of all of this unrest.
Secrets and lies, are best served up cold in this hot southern town.

4.5⭐️

The Evans women have ran the local funeral home for the last 15 years. Partly because it's a family business, but mostly because they are the only ones that know about Strigoi and have the ability to keep them down. While the Strigoi, the original vampire, have been dormant for years, that all changes when Mina Jean Murphy comes in for her burial but raises from the dead instead. As more dead bodies are found across the town, Ducey Evans, her daughter Lenore and her granddaughter Grace have their hands full.

Luna Evans knew nothing about the Strigoi until she walked in on Edwin Boone rising from the dead and trying to escape the funeral home freezer. All she knows is that she keeps having weird dreams featuring the people who have died in town and calling her to one of the bushes in the front yard. Her mom and grandmothers have been trying to teach her what is required of the Evans women, all while trying to figure out why they are rising again.

I really enjoyed this! I wasn't aware of the Romanian mythology of the Strigoi before this and liked learning of the lore through the eyes of the Evans women. I liked how they are more of a hybrid between a vampire and a zombie rather than a hyper intelligent being that you see in a lot of vampire books. I also liked that even though the story was about the undead and multigenerational trauma, the tone of the book wasn't too heavy and came across not quite a comedy. Each of the Evans women had such different personalities that really added to the story and made things interesting.

I do feel like like at times the story got a bit bogged down by info dumps that effected the pacing. That was easy to look over. There was something missing for me, though, that keeps this from being a 5 star and I'm not quite sure what it was.

Thank you Netgalley and Minotaur Books for providing this ARC to me!

I was immediately drawn to the cover and the title of this book, but unfortunately, the contents weren't for me. I was expecting a fun and easy to read story, but couldn't get excited or interested. Thank you NetGalley.

4 Stars
This was a very fun read. Maybe not everyone would say that about a book that included the dead killing and feeding on living, though. While it is a horror novel, the atmosphere of the small town and the quirky characters give this book a depth that even those not excited by horror would enjoy. It definitely gives off "Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires" vibes.

In a small Texas town, Luna is 15 years old and the youngest generation involved in running the local funeral home with other Evans women. Her mother Grace, grandmother Lenore, and GreatGrandmother Ducey have run the funeral home for the past 15 years, since the death of Lenore's husband Jim. All is good, until the dead start to rise and the Evans women have to put them back down. Luna has been kept in the dark about this family legacy of being caretakers, until things get out of hand and she must be told.

Despite the focus on the Evans women, there are a number of minor characters in the book that you get to know quite a lot about. It seems like you only learn this much about minor characters when they are going to die but that was not the case in this book. I really enjoyed having a more thorough view of the Evans' women lives and friends. That depth made the story much more engaging. Highly recommend.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publisher for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

Bless Your Heart by Lindy Ryan grabbed my attention with a fun cover and kept me hooked with a whirl wind of mystery and intrigue.

What I loved
-main characters that work in a funeral pallor and keep the undead hoards at bay was always a set up that would grasp my attention and keep it.
-Strong family bonds
-Small towns with big secrets is just a whole vibe for anyone who grew up in the Southern United States

What Didn't work as strongly

-way more gruesome on page than I expected
-a tad too fast paced. I wanted more time with the characters to get to really feel them out.

Who I would recommend this title for
Fans of franchises such as Buffy the vampire slayer and readers who are looking for something with a similar energy to the writing of Christopher Moore will have a good time with this story.

A great debut for this author. She has me immersed in the story of The Evans women from the first chapter. A Grandmother, a Mother and a teenage daughter may be the odd ones in town, but that’s just the way the townies think. However if they only knew the evil that lurks and how the Evans women help to keep it at bay. A good mystery with a rather solid plot and likable characters.

This was a fun supernatural Southern drama featuring four generations of Evans' women who run a funeral parlour and have secretly been handling all the undead who plague their town. When the body count starts to rise they realize something extra unusual is going on and there may be a new 'big bad' in town.

A perfect mash up of Practical magic, True Blood and Buffy the vampire hunter that oddly worked, I really enjoyed the family dynamics and world building in this story. Great on audio and recommended for fans of authors like KJ Dell'Antonia and Charlaine Harris. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital and audio copy in exchange for my honest review!

I was excited about BLESS YOUR HEART. Had I seen it in the store, it would have been a cover buy, but I'm glad it was just an arc request because of the cover since it was disappointing. It has a super fun cover, but the book is not that fun. I think it's trying too hard to be too many things. I found myself either overwhelmed because so much was happening or bored because not enough was happening. It definitely needed some more editing to help with the pacing. I DNF at 25% because it just wasn't worth pushing through.

I will give it 2 stars because it had a great premise and some excellent scenes. However, it needed some editing to make it a smoother read.

Thanks, Minotaur Books and Netgalley, for the gifted arc!

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for this Book.

This was a great read. I enjoyed that jr had a little of everything. Horror, humor, mystery, thriller. It was great. I enjoyed it.

I could not get into this book. I started it and got about 15% thru and could just not read anymore. It was too gruesome for me and I never found the humorous part. The funeral scenes were just more than I could stomach.

Thank you, Minotaur Books and NetGalley, for the advanced copy of Bless Your Heart.

I wanted to give this four stars, but I settled on three. I will be following this series to read book two. The descriptions of sucking and clicking on teeth were a little too much. The cover is a little misleading. The novel was a fun campy horror story, but I think Grady Hendrix has ruined this genre for other authors. If you're going to do campy horror, it needs to be done the right way. I'm hoping that this story was more of a laying down the backstory for this series. I can see this series getting better as the novels continue. I look forward to seeing what's to come for the Evans family.

what a great book and i loved reading this author. . loved the romance and how the couple came to be. Loved that they worked through their issues and found love. Loved this mystery

The Evans women have some undead to kill. As the saying goes, what rises up, must go down.

I received Bless Your Heart as an ALC and an eARC and I literally could not and did not stop listening/reading it. I read it mostly in one sitting. If I wasn’t listening to it while I was doing mom stuff, then I was reading it while the kids were playing. This is one book I wanted a physical copy of so badly but sadly did not get. I just knew in my heart I was going to love it, and guess what… I did! First of all, the cover and title already won brownie points before I even got to the pages. Everything about the outside of this book screams “You’re going to love me!!”. I absolutely loved everything about this book. You have a family of women keeping the town safe from the undead and they’re all people you already know and love. Well you at least know someone similar to them. I loved the dark humor and southern charm in this story. It’s fast paced and keeps your engaged throughout, making it also a great palate cleanser (if you’re in a slump), aside from it being a fantastic novel! I cannot wait for this gem to come out April 9, 2024 so I can get my hands on a finished copy to keep forever!

Thank you so much NetGalley, Minotaur Books, and Macmillan Audio for my advanced copy and the chance to review it honestly.

Happy reading!

I listened to the audiobook for this one and the audio narration was great. Perfect choice to perform this reading.

This one def had Southern Bookclub (#gradyhendrix hi!👋🏻 ) vibe. This book was like a lighthearted softer Grady Hendrix book with less gore. It was more diet horror/dark comedy than horror. Is #cozyhorror a thing, if it is that would be the proper category for this one.

I prefer scarier books but I enjoyed this one and getting to know all of the characters. I like the strong girl power vibes amongst the Evans women. I also thought the lgbtq+ added in was a nice rep.

It was evenly paced but a bit slow for my preference as I prefer something a little more fast paced.

I would read other work by this author.