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#the southern book club's guide to slaying vampires
genderhawk · 10 months
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I'm listening to the Southern book clubs guide to slaying vampires again and (slight spoilers) like the scariest parts aren't even the bugs or rats or vampire it's the way the husbands band together to infantilise, gaslight, divide, and shut down Patricia and the titular book club like I can listen to the while attic scene on one go but not anything with all the husbands
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Currently reading The southern book club’s guide to slaying vampires…. And I’ve never wanted to beat down a man the way I want to beat tf out of Carter. He bout to catch all these hands
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eldiariodetiara · 7 months
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“A reader lives many lives,” James Harris said. “The person who doesn’t read lives but one.”
Grady Hendrix, The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires
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bookfirstlinetourney · 8 months
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Round 1
The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.
-The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern
It is said - and it is true - that just before we are born, a cavern angel holds his finger to our mouths and whispers, "Hush! Don't tell what you know." That is why we have a cleft on our upper lips and remember nothing of where we came from.
-Prince Ombra, Roderic MacLeish
This story ends in blood. Every story begins in blood: a squalling baby yanked from the womb, bathed in mucus and half a quart of their mother's blood. But not many stories end in blood these days.
-The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, Grady Hendrix
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freckles-and-books · 2 years
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September TBR
Bring on the gothic, dark academia, mystery, and vampires! Starting with The Cartographers 😊
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spacebeyonce · 10 months
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ME LISTENING TO THESE WOMEN DISMEMBER THIS MAN LIKE
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planetofblank · 1 year
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Book haul from today!
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There were so many books that I wanted to pick up but, of course, I had to stick to a budget. Thrilled that there were sales going on.
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brokehorrorfan · 2 years
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Grady Hendrix (My Best Friend's Exorcism, The Final Girl Support Group) will publish How to Sell a Haunted House on January 17, 2023 via Berkley Publishing. 
The 400-page horror novel will be available in hardcover, e-book, and audio book. Read the synopsis below.
Every childhood home is haunted, and each of us are possessed by our parents.
When their parents die at the tail end of the coronavirus pandemic, Louise and Mark Joyner are devastated but nothing can prepare them for how bad things are about to get. The two siblings are almost totally estranged, and couldn’t be more different. Now, however, they don’t have a choice but to get along. The virus has passed, and both of them are facing bank accounts ravaged by the economic meltdown. Their one asset? Their childhood home. They need to get it on the market as soon as possible because they need the money. Yet before her parents died they taped newspaper over the mirrors and nailed shut the attic door.
Sometimes we feel like puppets, controlled by our upbringing and our genes. Sometimes we feel like our parents treat us like toys, or playthings, or even dolls. The past can ground us, teach us, and keep us safe. It can also trap us, and bind us, and suffocate the life out of us. As disturbing events stack up in the house, Louise and Mark have to learn that sometimes the only way to break away from the past, sometimes the only way to sell a haunted house, is to burn it all down.
Pre-order How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix.
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lonnson · 1 year
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The (best & worst) books I read in 2022
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THE BEST ✨🏆
Inkheart trilogy by Cornelia Funke Even on umpteenth reread my favourite book series of all time. A tale about the love of books, utterly magical, spellbinding and thrilling. Reading it feels like coming home and meeting old friends again. rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion My favourite new book I read this year. It was so poetic, romantic and ultimately hopeful and I loved it so much that I read it twice back to back. Instant new favourite! rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
A Far Wilder Magic by Allison Saft This book was just utterly magical, I loved the worldbuilding and unique characters and even though this is ya fantasy you can definitely enjoy the story as an adult, too. Also the relationship of the two main characters really worked for me. If you're looking for a creative, atmospheric standalone fantasy with alchemy, strong protagonists and cryptids, I can highly recommend this! rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 1/2
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix This book is not for the squeamish. I picked it up hoping for a scary and fun read and it was exactly that. This book was thrilling, creepy, gross (!) and darkly funny and I had a blast reading it. It's been a while since a book got this many reactions out of me. I'm normally someone who roots for the villains but NOT this one. He was so vile and truly detestable. And I'm really impressed at how the male author wrote the women and especially their feelings at the infuriatingly condescending way they were treated by men. The social commentary on classism, systemic racism and period-typical sexism was on point too. cw: gore, body horror, rape, child abuse, racism, sexism, death rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 1/2
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke The most unique book I've read this year. Magical, terrifying, poetic. The less you know about this book going into it, the better. I really don't have any other piece of media I can compare this story to. It's a masterpiece of creativity that makes you in awe of the author's imagination. rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 1/2
THE WORST 🫠⚰️
The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood Selling this book as "Reylo fanfic" is an insult to me, personally, as a Reylo shipper. There was nothing "Reylo" about his absolute cringefest, except for the main characters looking like Rey and Kylo Ren. The fake dating was absurd and the sex scene was both the most embarrassing and hilarious thing I've read all year (I don't think it's possible to fit an entire boob in your mouth). Anyway, I would like to apologize to Adam Driver on behalf of the Reylo fandom and I sincerely hope he will never read this clownery. rating: ⭐⭐
The Leper King by Scott Rezer Now this one really hurt me, because it's a book about King Baldwin IV and Baldwin is one of my blorbos who I love very much. But oh my fucking God, this book 😤 This was just HORRIBLE. I think in order to enjoy this you either have to be an expert on the time period (or you'll literally have no clue what's going on), very religious (I'm an atheist lol) or just, idk... on drugs?? It was just "look how they massacred my boy" Baldwin edition. rating: ⭐ 1/2
The Maidens by Alex Michaelides The problem I have with this book is one that I often have with thrillers: the premise sounded amazing but the reveal was just a messy disappointment. The protagonist is a psychotherapist, but honestly, this girl needs therapy herself. I don't think a woman who is grieving her late husband to a point where she sees his ghost should be working as a therapist. The way she was acting was varying between reckless and completely unhinged. Why would you confront someone you think is a serial killer? Why would you meet him for dinner alone in his private rooms??
Also, how did no one at Cambridge question that this hot, young professor has gathered an all-female cult-like group of beautiful, rich students around him (spoiler: he sleeps with all of them)? And how is it that the completely incompetent police in this book doesn't even consider the professor as a suspect when a girl of his cult/study group is murdered? I didn't see the reveal at the end coming but that's just because it was that fabricated and far-fetched. rating: ⭐⭐ 1/2
The Club by Ellery Lloyd This was just a boring, worse version of The White Lotus. rating: ⭐⭐
Poison Bay by Belinda Pollard A survival thriller set in the wilderness of New Zealand? Sounds like the book of my dreams! Right? Right?? Hoo boy was I in for a disappointment. The characters were walking stereotypes, for a "thriller" there was a dreadful lack of thrill, the "villain's" plan was convoluted and plain stupid. I also really disliked the religious aspect of the book. rating: ⭐ 1/2
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mag200 · 7 months
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hey what are ur thots on the southern book club's guide? i was thinking of getting it so curious if it's worth a read
well im a bit conflicted about it. honestly i really enjoyed about the first 75-ish% of the book, it was super interesting and funny and dark and intriguing. theres a few moments where the horror is truly so fucking gross in a way that i really enjoyed, and i wanted to talk to everyone about this book. then as it was starting to get close to the climax, there's like a dramatic tone shift, and i really could not enjoy the rest of the book after that. what was supposed to be the biggest and most exciting chapter kinda fell flat for me, and the ending didnt feel, idk, earned?
i'm curious if anyone else who read it feels the same way cause it was such a surprising letdown for me. there are things i like about the ending in theory but even the delivery suddenly felt bored to me, like the author was tired of writing it. it kept making me think that the author had decided the book needed a moral of the story but hadn't done much to take the steps to even set that moral up in a way that felt natural. i was surprised at how so much of the book had felt so introspective and self-aware only to wind up preachy and trite.
none of this is to say don't buy it and read it - you may enjoy the end more than i did. the book brings up a lot of interesting subjects, namely about misogyny and racism and their place within horror, and again i thought the majority of the book handled it pretty well. i've seen other tumblr horror girlies recommend this book though so maybe it just really wasnt my cup of tea at the end.
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skully-bones · 2 years
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YES QUEEN GET HIS ASS
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brightbeautifulthings · 10 months
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The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
"'Nightwalking men always have a hunger on them,' she croaked. 'They never stop taking and they don't know about enough. They mortgaged their souls away and now they eat and eat and never know how to stop.'"
Year Read: 2023
Rating: 3/5
About: Patricia is an upper-middle class housewife in the 90s, under-appreciated by her husband and kids, and the only bright spot in her week of cleaning, cooking, and shuffling the kids back and forth to school and activities is her true crime book club with the other Charleston moms. When a tall, dark, and charming stranger moves to the neighborhood, Patricia begins to suspect that he's responsible for recent attacks and disappearances. But who would ever believe her? Trigger warnings: character death (graphic, on-page), child death, pedophilia (on-page), rape (graphically described), animal death, child abuse, abduction, body horror, gore, dismemberment, severe injury, rats, implied anti-Semitism/Neo-Nazis, sexism (strong theme), racism, ableism, ageism, dementia. Graphic NSFW content.
Thoughts: This is another instance where I feel like a book is well-done, but I didn't particularly enjoy it. It might actually be Hendrix's most complicated and well-written novel to date. I just didn't like it. At the heart of this dislike is a simple preference in supernatural horror: I wanted more actual vampire in it. Of all the points, I felt like that aspect was the weakest. There's very little lore on Hendrix's vampires, and what's there seems more like a matter of convenience than consistency. (For example, if James can control creatures like rats, why does he not call on them when he's in danger?) What lore we do get is actually pretty gross. No sparkling Twilight vampires here. No fangs, even, which is just a bit sad.
My second issue is linked to that one, and it's that the vampire aspect is completely irrelevant to this story. It makes no difference whatsoever that James is a vampire. He could be literally any other male character in the story, any other normal human predator, and still accomplish all the same things, still put people, particularly women and children, in danger in exactly the same ways (except, granted, maybe the rat part). He's so terribly lackluster as a villain, just as arrogant and banal as your average scumbag rapist, child predator, or scamming embezzler. No fangs required, these things are already terrible. In part, this is one of the things the novel does well, since it highlights the cracks in our own culture. It's so easy for him to sway people to his side and turn husbands against their wives, but I prefer a better class of villain in my fiction.
I waver back and forth on my feelings for Patricia, but I think we're meant to. She doesn't always do the right thing, the women don't always have each other's backs, and she buckles under the pressure of keeping her life perfect and orderly, which is about what you'd expect from real life. If there's a character to pull for, it's actually Mrs. Greene, the Black caregiver who sees what's happening long before anyone else but is powerless to stop it. There's an obvious thread in there about how white, privileged people only care about awful things when it affects them, regardless of anyone else's children dying. (As a side issue, I also don't appreciate Hendrix's use of dementia for shock value. It's not edgy, just insensitive to people actually dealing with it.) It's gritty, dark, and gory, but the ending is satisfying in a way that bumped it back up to three stars for me.
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etchingsandepitaphs · 20 days
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Book Review: The Southern Book Club's Guide To Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendricks
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🌕🌑🌑🌑🌑
(yes I took the "moon as star rating" thing from Lexi aka NewlyNova on YouTube, she's amazing check her out)
TW (for this review): Discussions of sexual violence
(what should've been a) TW (for this book): SEXUAL VIOLENCE AGAINST ADULTS AND MINORS
I very rarely include spoilers in my reviews, but I think this is important because I haven't seen this mentioned at all in the discussions surrounding this book.
This book was SO FUN for like 350 out of the 400 pages. I was reading it in my car in the rain, and then later at night, I was getting a little spooked, I was loving Patricia's descent into madness, it was great. And then somebody gets raped. But they don't describe it, just the aftermath, so it didn't completely ruin the book for me, I just kind of wish there had been a trigger warning in the beginning of the book so that I was prepared. But THEN we find the vampire feeding on the main character's naked underage daughter, and that was when I wrote this book off. I finished the entire thing in one day, because it was genuinely so good for almost the entire book, but this whole thing just completely ruined it for me. 
In my opinion, there was absolutely no reason for the vampire's feeding to be effectively sexual assault. He could've eaten from any other part of their body, it didn't have to be their inner thighs. It all just felt very icky and unnecessary to me. But if you want to argue that it had to be, I think that if sexual violence (because even if he wasn't touching them sexually, it all held the air of sexual violence) was going to be that major of an aspect of your book, please include some kind of page of trigger warnings at the beginning, because it was very icky and uncomfortable to read and genuinely ruined this otherwise very good book for me. Yes, I acknowledge that I should've looked up the trigger warnings, but still. It was unnecessary.
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weakling-grace · 2 years
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“A reader lives many lives,” James Harris said. “The person who doesn’t read lives but one. But if you’re happy just doing what you’re told and reading what other people think you should read, then don’t let me stop you. I just find it sad.”
—James Harris in The Southern Book Club's Guide To Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
Because vampires are the original serial killers, stripped of everything that makes us human—they have no friends, no family, no roots, no children. All they have is hunger. They eat and eat but they’re never full. With this book, I wanted to pit a man freed from all responsibilities but his appetites against women whose lives are shaped by their endless responsibilities. I wanted to pit Dracula against my mom. As you’ll see, it’s not a fair fight.
— Grady Hendrix, author's note on The Southern Book Club's Guide To Slaying Vampires
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exordium-graphx · 1 year
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The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix (on my tbr list)
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summersnow82 · 9 months
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The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires Casting
James Harris. Asshat. Vampire. Manipulator. Pure evil.
1. Dan Stevens
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2. Sebastian Stan
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3. Josh Dallas
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4. Tom Hiddleston
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5. Aaron Taylor Johnson
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6. Matthew McConaughey
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7. Chris Hemsworth
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8. Ryan Gosling
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9. Chris Pine
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10. Paul Bettany
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