The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

Southern housewives in the 90s form a book club to read true crime novels and end up fighting a vampire in their neighborhood. What a fun ride!

Patricia is a housewife consumed by taking care of her husband and children. To bring some entertainment and friendship into her life, she joins a book club with other housewives and reads books about serial killers. When a stranger comes to town and bad things begin to happen to children, Patricia becomes convinced this stranger is evil and must be stopped. So she sets out on a mission to discover the truth and convince her friends that this man must be stopped no matter the cost.

The characters in this book are representations of the stereotype of the southern housewife. As such, they are quite entertaining, especially if you are from the south and can relate to some of their eccentricities. However, they do feel a bit more like housewives from the 50s than from the 90s. They are very dependent on their husbands and quite obedient, which is frustrating to read as an independent woman in current times. They do grow as the story progresses, though, and learn to stand up a bit more for themselves.

The plot of this story is the highlight. It's a bit like Buffy the Vampire Slayer but with southern manners and housewives instead of angsty teenagers. There are hints and clues throughout the beginning of the book that there is a vampire in town, and as a reader you are just itching for the women to put the clues together and take action. There are both humorous and gruesome events in the plot allowing the reader some time to relax between the tenser sections of the book.

Overall, reading this book was a fun, wild ride. I enjoyed every minute of it. Yes, it has some stereotypes that are a bit frustrating and it does not do a great job with black representation. That's why it's a 4 star read for me. I would recommend this book to fans of Southern Gothic writing and anyone just looking for a good time reading a vampire hunting story.