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

challenging dark mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This book was really tough for me to read and if you are a person who might need to be aware of things before hand, please read content warnings. I would absolutely never recommend it to anyone who is not prepared to a) read not only gore but every day life disturbing content and b) really think about how this book turns Dracula on its head in terms of what a vampire represents in culture.
In Dracula, the monster related horror is just a symbol for xenophobia. In this book, the monster related horror is a symbol for how you can let someone into your lives and neighborhood and that person can truly be a person in your community. Except they have unnatural urges that harm your children and “Uncle James” is actually a predator.
This book tackles a lot of real world issues such as misogyny and racism, and how white women can suffer from misogyny but still perpetuate racism. This book also tackles the reality that people of color face in the under reporting, under investigating etc of crimes against them. I absolutely urge you to read with caution if that’s not something you want to engage with. The racism in the world of the 90s era southern US is vibrant on the page.

I’m used to vampire feeding as a symbol for
sex and sexual assault.
I wasn’t entirely prepared for the way this vampire feeds to essentially BE
child sexual assault and for how he would create a new vampire to be rape.
It was shocking, and I stewed for a long time on whether or not I think
Slick’s rape or even Destiny and Korey’s grooming and assault
were necessary (especially so explicitly). Ultimately, I think because this vampire tale is about
letting someone you trust near your community and that trust being betrayed, it fits and it isn’t another example of a male writer using that kind of violence as shock value. But as a survivor myself, it was very difficult.
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