Reviews with content warning for Toxic relationship - The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

This book is marketed and presented as if it will be a dark comedy about women in a book club taking down vampires.

Instead it is super dark, they aren’t even really friends, they don’t do a lot of vampire slayings (he’s not even a vampire?), they don’t protect anybody, and it should have a lot of trigger warnings.

I thought it was going to be a more Stranger Things meets Pride and Prejudice and Zombies vibe and it was more like a Stephen King’s IT vibe.

It’s a book you need to be prepared to read and I was not prepared.

Not my thing.

Content Warnings

lunarcat101's review against another edition

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dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

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castomb's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

Content Warnings

ttben10's review against another edition

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adventurous funny mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

To begin, i will give my personal standpoint so that my review can be understood from that perspective. I am a black girl, who grew up on six mile in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina… my family settling there post slavery, going further back than can be documented. The story of Ms. Greene is the story of many women in my family, and the portrayal of the area is exactly how it seems, even to this day— to an extent. I will touch on that later. This book does more than ring true to me, it paints the picture clearly for things i have experienced or heard of loved ones experiencing and yes it’s unnerving but it is the truth.

TSBCGTSV is set mainly in the Old Village, a wealthy and predominantly white area of Mount Pleasant where everyone knows everyone, until they don’t. Grady jumps right into the action and never lets up. I had to force myself to put it down as my breaks ended and i needed to get back to work. There are some truly unsettling scenes with gore descriptions that make you feel like you’ve turned on a horror movie. It’s funny at times, especially when you can relate… the characters can be attached to someone i know and i can picture their drives as they navigate the city or understand why the use of a location was for jest. I’m going to break this up into some of the main topics of discussions:

Racism: I think a lot of people’s issue with this book is that they want Grady to expand on his mention of class/race/gentrification in a serious way that does not make sense for this book. The point of mentioning these topics is to have an accurate representation of the time and setting… there IS no solution and these things STILL happen. The gentrification of six mile is not just a story plot line it is real life and the one fictional Gracious Cay is the reality of multiple originally black neighborhoods being torn down and built up with houses we could never afford… the trailer home i grew up in is now perpendicular to a new neighborhood that has 3 story homes. Ms. Greene is pictured as “the help” because those are one of the only jobs a black woman could have had at that time and the stories told by my mother and grandmother are no different. The kids in six mile were not stereotypical mean black kids, they were my cousins and i who would run to get our uncles when there was a car we’d never seen before coming down our road because there was no reason to unless you lived in the trailers. The lack of care that the housewives showed for the children and families of that area are quintessential for understanding the racism that takes place ESPECIALLY when there is a class divide. Grady did not mention these to be vile, he mentioned them to have you understand what life was/is like for the people in this area. The only thing in this topic that i was put off by was the antisemitism that Blue became obsessed with, i understand it was to help us see the damage his trauma caused but it could’ve been done in another way.
Sexism: Does Grady struggle with writing women from time to time? yes. Can it be seen as misogyny, the way he writes the housewives? sure! Was i able to connect each character in the book to someone i know in real life because of how accurate the southern housewife depiction was? absolutely. What i did not enjoy was the gaslighting, i think its a tired trope but i hate that i can still defend it because it makes sense why it happens.
Rape: This is one thing i simply could not ever excuse, i do not agree with his use of rape in this story especially

since it was with a minor. Was NOT needed and could’ve been left out entirely. The same with Slick and how she was pressed to relive the moment for the sake of investigation.

Content Warnings

m4rtt4's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This was a lot darker and sadder than I had expected, but I ate it up nonetheless. Very few books have made me feel as many emotions as this one did: joy, anger, sadness, disgust, fear, and empathy can all be felt through this story, just to name a few. The husbands made me want to bang my head against a wall!! Misogyny really was one of the horror elements. The gore went a bit overboard at times, but despite the strange mixture of emotions and clashing images, I'd highly recommend this book! The trigger warnings should not be taken lightly, though.

+ Bahni Turpin's narration was absolutely brilliant!

Content Warnings

snslayer's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Good but absolutely brutal to read as a woman. Perfectly captures white women at their worst and at their best and the lives we ruin along the way. I had to put it down for a bit in the middle because I was getting so worked up about the husbands.

Content Warnings

hfayereads's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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