The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires in Pick-a-Shelf

May 23, 2021 Carrie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: horror, southern

3.5 but rounding up. I think if I read this rather that listened to it my rating would be a more solid 4.

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Feb 11, 2024 emily rated it it was amazing

Shelves: americana, 2024, fiction-contemporary, to-purchase, zombies-vamps-undead, horror, why-is-this-not-a-movie-yet, audiobook, race-class-gender-identities, cw-animal-death

This is not a book about a vampire. This is a book about the horrors of suburban conformity, about the price of white silence, about the willful ignorance of so-called good men when their worldview is challenged, and about the importance and power of women having each other's backs.

As I said in one of my updates, I was NOT expecting this book to go as hard as it did, in several different arenas. I didn't expect swarms of semi-sentient carnivorous rats; I didn't expect bug-infested filth-claustr This is not a book about a vampire. This is a book about the horrors of suburban conformity, about the price of white silence, about the willful ignorance of so-called good men when their worldview is challenged, and about the importance and power of women having each other's backs.

As I said in one of my updates, I was NOT expecting this book to go as hard as it did, in several different arenas. I didn't expect swarms of semi-sentient carnivorous rats; I didn't expect bug-infested filth-claustrophobia; I didn't expect skin-crawling fury and revulsion at the deep-seated misogyny our main character faces from her own husband. (Seriously, the scene where (view spoiler). I wanted to murder all of them in cold blood.)

There's just so much to like here. Relatable women who don't turn into Ripley out of nowhere but who defeat the bad guy via their intuition, their social connections, their knowledge of the neighborhood, and other skills and talents considered small or useless by the men in their lives. The women are all written to feel familiar, but never sink into tired-trope territory, and frankly I was impressed at Hendrix's ability to write believable women when so many men horror authors do it so poorly. There was a certain amount of male gaze, sure, but specifically where (view spoiler)

Hendrix does a good job pointing out white middle-class racism too, and especially in a book that on the surface doesn't demand any such plot thread be included (I can easily imagine this book being written 10 or 20 years ago and simply not including any Black people) I found it well done-- Mrs. Greene never strays into the "magical Negro" trope, and Hendrix doesn't overwrite 2020s progressive views onto his 1990s housewives. He even makes a point of calling out the idea of "super predators" and other problematic racial narratives of the time. I'm white so I can't say if Mrs. Greene was problematic in other ways, but to me the roles the Black characters held felt like a callout rather than an oversight.

Anyway, it's been awhile since a novel genuinely scared me, and probably even longer since (view spoiler) the way I did here, so I'm very pleased to make this my first 5-star novel of 2024, and can't wait to chat about it in my virtual book club. ...more

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Jul 06, 2020 Cora rated it really liked it

Shelves: american-author, horror, murder, vampires, paranormal, books-about-books, south-carolina, 20th-century, supernatural, family-relationships

This book hit my horror sweet spot. It was just the right amount of gross for me. I also liked how the real horror of the story wasn't necessarily the monster, but the gas-lighting and trivializing of Patricia and her friends by their husbands and the racism and classism of society in regards to the first victims. When horror novels tackle the real everyday evils in addition to the made up monsters it really adds an additional layer to the dread and fear because stuff like this could really happ ...more

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