Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

It's been a long time since I've picked up a horror book so I grabbed this one when I saw it at the library. I knew about this author from back when he used to make appearances on podcasts before his writing career really took off. I would say that the title gives the summary of the book only if one applies a couple of adjustments. It isn't really much of a 'guide' except perhaps by example. The book club ladies' scheme nearly fails at several points, however. But more importantly, there's only one character that might be classified as a vampire, not multiple 'vampires.' The first 60% of the book was a fairly easy non-strenuous read where you're introduced to the major characters and it drills into the societal values of Charleston. Then it takes a hard turn where the viewpoint character, Patricia Campbell, gets into trouble, landing in the hospital. Then there's a jump in time, another call to action, and things come to a climax. That's when it hits its stride going deep into dark places along with a fair amount of gore and graphic content culminating in the main big action sequence. It's definitely concentrates all the disturbing content in one place here.

I did like the gentle satire of the first part of the book, then repelled by the graphic violence and macabre nature of the second part of the book which the author intends. The trouble is I had a hard time sympathizing with Patricia enough to feel she earned the ending. She was the one that set off the inciting event, but she didn't actually play a part in the 'slaying.' I also did not like the bad guy protagonist he didn't really convince me at any point along the way that he was anything other than bad news and I would have liked to see a little more smoke and mirrors put up to disguise his evil nature. I think the author may have gone just a little bit too far making the male characters as awful as possible. Couldn't there have been at least one who wasn't absolutely worthless? I think I would have enjoyed seeing the one character of a marginalized identity, Mrs. Greene, as the viewpoint character in this story instead. I can tell that this is not the story that the author wanted to write, though.

That said, I would say that this is a competently written book by an author who knows his way around the horror genre with a bunch of other novels to his credit. I guess I would say that I'm really not the right audience for this book. Horror fans would mainly be much more receptive to the dark turn that this book takes towards the end. As a native of South Carolina, the author knows the setting in depth and it does show. Although I turned out not to be superfan in this case I do have one other of the author's novels on my to be read list and might just dip into that around Halloween time this year if I get a chance.