Reviews tagging 'Medical trauma'

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

70 reviews

uranaishi's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Forced institutionalization, Gaslighting, Gore, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Dementia, Hate crime, Injury/Injury detail, Medical trauma, and Murder

Moderate: Rape, Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, Alcohol, Body shaming, Child abuse, Child death, Racism, Self harm, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Stalking, Excrement, Mental illness, Misogyny, Domestic abuse, Infidelity, Medical content, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Emotional abuse, Sexism, Sexual assault, Suicide, Vomit, Classism, Cursing, Death, and Violence

Minor: Drug abuse, Drug use, Grief, Infertility, Miscarriage, Addiction, Physical abuse, and Pregnancy

savvyrosereads's review against another edition

dark tense fast-paced

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

4.0

Rating: 4/5 stars

Patricia Campbell is a good wife and mother leading a normal life in her quiet corner of Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, where her book club devours true crime and thriller novels. But suddenly a mysterious stranger arrives in town, and Patricia becomes convinced the true danger might be lurking outside the pages…

This was my first Grady Hendrix novel but it definitely won’t be my last. I adored the setting, which is equal parts Gothic southern elegance and small town drama, and the writing style, which is somehow both funny and viscerally horrifying.

I did enjoy the first half of this one more than the second, as I felt several characters made choices I didn’t particularly enjoy and the plot moved in some ways that I could have done without. That said, if you want a gory, terrifying, occasionally disgusting, but very well-written horror read, this one is for you. And, as a bonus, the themes are surprisingly deep—particularly the reflections on how quick we are to (unfairly) dismiss the importance of “women’s work” and women’s experiences.

Recommended to anyone, but especially if you like: vampire lore; Gothic horror; humor with a dark edge

CW: Murder/gore (including child death and animal death/injury); suicide/suicide attempt; sexual assault; domestic abuse; gaslighting; dementia; bugs/vermin; discussions of racism.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Child abuse, Child death, Death of parent, Dementia, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Medical trauma, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Murder, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Violence, Death, Gaslighting, Sexual violence, and Stalking

Moderate: Animal cruelty and Animal death

ruthmoog's review

challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

4.75

This gave me chills. Once I was invested I whizzed through the story, whisked up by the relentless challenge to overcome the vampiric.

The group use their women's work skills to fight, but this was a bit cliché for me - and you could play content warning bingo with it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical trauma, Mental illness, Sexual violence, Suicide attempt, Terminal illness, Sexual content, Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Kidnapping, Misogyny, Murder, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Classism, Confinement, Death, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Forced institutionalization, Gaslighting, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Toxic relationship, Xenophobia, Sexism, Stalking, Suicide, and Violence

Moderate: War, Abandonment, and Vomit

Minor: Car accident

Nazism

lindsayerin's review

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

2.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Gore, Suicide attempt, Gaslighting, Blood, Sexism, Sexual violence, Violence, Suicide, Sexual assault, Self harm, Murder, Misogyny, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail, Hate crime, Racism, and Forced institutionalization

Moderate: Domestic abuse, Child abuse, and Chronic illness

Minor: Animal death, Animal cruelty, and Body shaming

soyboi's review

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Blood, Child death, Classism, Death, Dementia, Body horror, Child abuse, Gore, Infidelity, Misogyny, Domestic abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Forced institutionalization, Injury/Injury detail, Medical trauma, Murder, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Stalking, Suicide, Vomit, Violence, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Grief, Racism, and Sexism

magellen's review

slow-paced

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

2.0

UGH this is the driest, most tedious book to be incorrectly raved about in the last several years. A PTA meeting reading a 1988 Buick Skylark repair manual on half speed would be more engaging than what I just put myself through.

How did this script like book receive so much praise? It's wildly dialog dependent with large bland swathes of set description and zero voice or atmosphere. There's a good three separate occurances of the plot momentum being cut at the ankles and reset. There are time skips that feel like whole rehashes of the concept. 

There is so very little tension.

The book begins with an authors note that feels very much like someone going 'hold on hold on! I swear it'll get good!' Like an excuse for what's to come and buddy it was not apologetic enough nor did the promises of the note ever come to fruition.

A couple chapters in I thought, oh god, I'm gonna have to DNF, but then the indignation kicked in that this ridiculous flat toned book is one of the current champions of 'southern horror'. Its not. Hendrix tells you how everything feels, rather than showing you so everything from setting to emotions come across clinical, literally like a script waiting for someone else's performance to bring it to life.
Another couple chapters and I thought well maybe there's a twist, maybe it isn't going to be literally this simplistic. There was not. There was not much of anything for the front 80% of the novel. 

Finally when "moms vs dracula" kicks in, it just...blandly rolls along, characters kicking and screaming and stalling the plot. There is no true interiority to the narrative, no heart beating in its pages.

Early on when Patricia has to race upstairs to close a window and the action stretches rubbery and flat, somehow without tension though the fear should be heady, welp that is the whole book. You don't worry for the characters, you don't feel really anything for them because Hendrix flattens everything out into storyboards. You should get a jolt of oh god don't go in that room, don't step into that danger but it never comes.

Like how the hell do you make a dismemberment so boring? It drags, the very antithesis of visceral, for so fucking long. Moments that stretch never make you squirm or hope for resolution, they just stretch, unrelenting as a lecture.

The book circles several more interesting angles that it veers from repeatedly in choice of the mundane - maybe that was Hendrix's point, maybe he thought that's how he could best put the book in a house wife's POV. Rather, it limits itself by doing so, making you hate the very thing he claims to be lifting up into the realm of 'fun'.

From what I've heard, all his books are script like. If this is the best of them? Yeesh, steer clear!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Toxic relationship, Suicide attempt, Sexual assault, Sexism, Misogyny, and Stalking

Minor: Blood, Body horror, Classism, Death of parent, Child death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Medical trauma, and Murder

aardwyrm's review

dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense slow-paced

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

5.0

Like having your teeth pulled out by barbed wire, but they're really polite about it. There is a very scary vampire, but, you know how all good horror is about the unnatural threat AND the real ones? There's more dread in a cocktail party with friendly acquaintances than in most of the scenes with, you know, vampirism. The book juggles its time and place, both as a setting dripping with dread and with a comfortable, sympathetic gentleness that never actually lets anybody off the hook (though Mrs. Green is really much too forgiving in the last act). Does a really interesting job with being horribly physical about the most mundane and most otherworldly manifestations of gore alike. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Dementia, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Medical content, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Body shaming, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Eating disorder, Fatphobia, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual assault, Violence, Vomit, Animal death, Blood, Body horror, Child death, Classism, Confinement, Infidelity, Medical trauma, Murder, Pedophilia, Self harm, Racial slurs, Stalking, Suicidal thoughts, Ableism, Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Bullying, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Forced institutionalization, Gaslighting, Grief, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Terminal illness, Torture, Toxic friendship, and Toxic relationship

I liked this book, but it's billed as more horror comedy, and I do want to be clear, the horrible parts are gonna hit.

juliaaa02's review

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape and Violence

Moderate: Terminal illness, Adult/minor relationship, Medical trauma, Toxic relationship, Blood, Animal cruelty, Domestic abuse, Death of parent, Suicide attempt, Medical content, Sexual assault, Child death, Child abuse, and Suicide

madelinekramer2021's review

challenging mysterious fast-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, Rape, Child death, Cannibalism, Sexual assault, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Gaslighting, Mental illness, Medical trauma, Death, Sexism, Forced institutionalization, Domestic abuse, Death of parent, Dementia, and Classism

lestie4short's review against another edition

Far to descriptive about things that creeped me out. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Excrement, Gaslighting, Hate crime, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Suicide attempt, and Vomit

I had to stop at the description of a roach crawling into MC's ear. It was just to much