I finished it!

Tonight, I finished reading The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix. I’ll go ahead and give it my rating along with a few points I liked and disliked about the book. This may or may not contain spoilers so, continue reading at your own risk.

Overall Rating: 9/10

I didn’t give a full 10/10 rating because of how much the book made me mad during some parts 😂 Hendrix really knew how to push your buttons, especially if you’re a woman. The way he wrote the men in this book really made me sick; they can all get sucked on by a vampire for all I care!

WARNING! Possible Triggers.

If you’re sensitive to SA (s3xual ass@ult), you may want to reconsider reading this book. I was genuinely shocked at some parts mostly because I wasn’t expecting it, but anyone who has possibly experienced something along these lines may not appreciate these particular scenes in the book. I sometimes wish they’d put the rating on books, or even what some of the content may contain. Maybe it was already known that these things would be in there, but I was blindsided. It doesn’t take away from the fact that it was a good book, but it is something to keep in mind before you decide to read it.

Favorite Character(s).

Honestly, I think Mrs. Greene has to be my favorite. Throughout all of the chaos in this book, she kept a level-head and kept it real to the other characters when they were lying and doing her and the people of Six Mile dirty. At first I thought she was a white woman, but reading deeper into the book, she had to be black. I could feel it in her attitude, spunk, and mostly her wisdom.

Patricia was a good character too, and I’m not saying this just because she was the main character. But she really tried her best to do what she could, to make people aware. Even if the choices she made were pretty stupid. I admire her at the end of the book for doing what needed to be done, for the good of her neighborhood, her children, and her own personal life.

Least Favorite Character(s).

All the men. ALL. OF. THE. MEN. They were terrible, as I said I at the beginning of this post. Every single one of them. None of them were faithful to their wives, they all belittled their wives and the things they did to keep their households together, they cared about nothing but money, and when the women tried to explain the dangers occurring, they embarrassed them and shut them down for one of their own – yes, for another man. I hated all of them. Which was definitely one of the points I believe Hendrix was trying to make; he painted the Southern, blue collar, even white collar man to be awful. And he did a fantastic job doing it.

Was it Scary?

Yes, it was. When I chose this book to read for this month, I wondered if it would actually be scary, or if it just had the word “vampire” on the cover, and I could consider it a “spooky” book for the spooky season. But this book terrified me in many ways as I read chunks of it I at a time, always at night right before bed. Parts of it made me shutter, and although I was curious as to what would happen next, I was also a little scared about what the vampire’s next move would be. The choices that the women made were also frightening after seeing the results of them. This book definitely kept me on the edge of my seat until the very end.

In conclusion, I’d say this book was worth reading. It I actually was a Library Staff Pick (yes, I got my copy from the library), and I see why. The perspective and insight it gives on a typical Southern woman, and the contrast in her actions in this book was a great juxtaposition (I’m pretty sure I’m using that word right…). I haven’t read a book written by a man in a long time, and even though I hated all the men in this book, I love that it was a MAN who wrote them that way. He gave us the worst sides of both the men and the women, and put that Southern charm in the mix along with the lust of a vampire. If you find a copy of this book at your library, I’d say you should go ahead and check it out!

I looked up Hendrix’s other books, and I really want to read The Final Girl Support Group written by him. If you want to know what that’s about, Google the synopsis, it’s pretty interesting!

What’s the last book you read? How would you get rid of a vampire that invaded your neighborhood?

Mishy 🦋🧛‍♂️