The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix, 404 pages

From GoodReads: "Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias meet Dracula in this Southern-flavored supernatural thriller set in the '90s about a women's book club that must protect its suburban community from a mysterious and handsome stranger who turns out to be a blood-sucking fiend."

This book has a slow, infuriating-but-necessary build. It features rampant systematic racism and misogyny and violation on a level that was intense. My cheeks burned with second hand humiliation in some scenes. Some scenes were so disturbing on a visceral level that I had to stop reading and just sit with it. The horror and the dread stick with you in a vicious, disturbingly thrilling way. 

How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

 

How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix - 419 pages

When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn’t want to leave her daughter with her ex and fly to Charleston. She doesn’t want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father’s academic career and her mother’s lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. She doesn’t want to learn how to live without the two people who knew and loved her best in the world.

Most of all, she doesn’t want to deal with her brother, Mark, who never left their hometown, gets fired from one job after another, and resents her success. Unfortunately, she’ll need his help to get the house ready for sale because it’ll take more than some new paint on the walls and clearing out a lifetime of memories to get this place on the market.

But some houses don’t want to be sold, and their home has other plans for both of them…

This book had the spook factor with the creepy dolls, but for me that is about it.  I didn't find this book scary at all and honestly it was a chore to get through.  The main characters acted so immature that I found it annoying.

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix, 342 pages

The last one, the survivor: the Final Girl. What happens to the final would-be victim after the murderer is carted off or otherwise presumed dead? No one understands the life of a Final Girl except her fellow Final Girls. 

Lynette Tarkington survived a massacre. For more than a decade she and a group of Final Girls meet because no one else can truly understand what it's like being a Final Girl. But when a new threat appears to be targeting Final Girls, the group is splintered, and Lynette is forced to survive her worst nightmares again.

This was a quick read that was lots of fun. The book is enjoyable on its own, but it takes on a new dynamic if you are familiar with old horror films and tropes. It was a lovely strange interlude in my regular reading schedule.