“The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires” had a killer premise, but the slow burn and deeply frustrating characters made this one a struggle for me.

I thought “How to Sell a Haunted House” was a slow burn, but this put that to shame. The first two-thirds felt less like vampire hunting and more like an extended exercise in convincing me to despise nearly everyone. Kids, husbands, wives… no one was safe.

There are also some incredibly heavy topics woven throughout, including domestic abuse, child abuse, sexual assault, suicide, and sexism. Yet somehow, even with all of that AND some fairly graphic horror, parts of the story still felt strangely watered down.

The description totally catfished me. I expected a book club taking on a vampire. What I mostly got was a reminder that people can be terrible. They’re afraid to act, they don’t believe their friends, they look the other way when awful things happen, and the good ol’ boys club is alive and thriving.

I also struggled with the audiobook at 1x speed. Bahni Turpin’s Southern delivery was much slower than what my brain is apparently trained for, but once I bumped it up to 1.7x, the narration worked much better for me. Her character voices and Southern cadence fit the setting well, even if the pacing wasn’t personally my preference.

The final third finally gave me more of what I’d been waiting for, and the ending delivered what I can only describe as a tragic HEA… for some. Definitely not all.

📖 The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires
✍️ Grady Hendrix
🎙️ Bahni Turpin
⭐️⭐️⭐️