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A review by magellen
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
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!
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.
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!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, Stalking, and Suicide attempt
Minor: Body horror, Child death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Blood, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism