The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires
The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix is $3.99! Carrie review this one and gave it a B:
Truthfully, if I had known what I was getting into, I doubt I would have read this book. And yet I’m so glad I did, because this, among other things, is a story about reading whatever the heck we want to read and the power of women when they decide to unite, both of which are themes that are Relevant to my Interests, Oh, Yeah.
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.
Patricia Campbell had always planned for a big life, but after giving up her career as a nurse to marry an ambitious doctor and become a mother, Patricia’s life has never felt smaller. The days are long, her kids are ungrateful, her husband is distant, and her to-do list is never really done. The one thing she has to look forward to is her book club, a group of Charleston mothers united only by their love for true-crime and suspenseful fiction. In these meetings, they’re more likely to discuss the FBI’s recent siege of Waco as much as the ups and downs of marriage and motherhood.
But when an artistic and sensitive stranger moves into the neighborhood, the book club’s meetings turn into speculation about the newcomer. Patricia is initially attracted to him, but when some local children go missing, she starts to suspect the newcomer is involved. She begins her own investigation, assuming that he’s a Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy. What she uncovers is far more terrifying, and soon she–and her book club–are the only people standing between the monster they’ve invited into their homes and their unsuspecting community.
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The Age of Witches by Louisa Morgan is $2.99! Sarah mentioned this one a previous Hide Your Wallet and was excited about the mention of Gilded Age witches. I’ve been so curious about Morgan’s books and their ability to blend historical settings, family dynamics, and magic.
In Gilded Age New York, a centuries-long clash between two magical families ignites when a young witch must choose between love and loyalty, power and ambition, in this magical novel by Louisa Morgan.
In 1692, Bridget Bishop was hanged as a witch. Two hundred years later, her legacy lives on in the scions of two very different lines: one dedicated to using their powers to heal and help women in need; the other, determined to grasp power for themselves by whatever means necessary. This clash will play out in the fate of Annis, a young woman in Gilded Age New York who finds herself a pawn in the family struggle for supremacy. She’ll need to claim her own power to save herself-and resist succumbing to the darkness that threatens to overcome them all.
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As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
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The Billionaire Bachelor by Jessica Lemmon is $2.99! For the most part, I enjoyed this one and it felt very much like a K-drama with its modern marriage of convenience. But the commitment to the conflict seemed to wane a little bit and had me wondering why the pair still weren’t kissing yet.
Manwhore. That’s what the board of directors-and the tabloids-thinks of billionaire bachelor Reese Crane. Ordinarily he couldn’t care less, but his playboy past is preventing the board from naming him CEO of Crane Hotels. Nothing-and no one-will keep him from his life’s legacy. They want a settled man to lead the company? Then that’s exactly what he’ll give them.
Merina Van Heusen will do anything to get her parents’ funky boutique hotel back-even marry cold-as-ice-but-sexy-as-hell Reese Crane. It’s a simple business contract-six months of marriage, absolute secrecy, and the Van Heusen is all hers again. But when sparks fly between them, their passion quickly moves from the boardroom to the bedroom. And soon Merina is living her worst nightmare: falling in love with her husband . . .
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As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
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Dalliances & Devotion by Felicia Grossman is $2.99! This is the second book in The Truitts series, and the first is also on sale. Claudia gave this one a B:
Readers who enjoy seeing characters embark on literal and figurative road trips will like this book. As long as they are patient with a few detours, the journey and the destination are worth it.
A change in course can be refreshing…when it’s done together.
1871
After two disastrous marriages, beauty columnist Amalia Truitt’s life is finally her own—well, it will be if she can get herself back to Delaware and demand access to her share of the Truitt family fortune. After all, the charity she’s organized for women who can’t afford their own divorces won’t fund itself.
However, not everyone wants her to reach her destination. When her family learns she’s been receiving anonymous death threats, a solo journey is out of the question.
Enter David Zisskind, the ragtag-peddler-turned-soldier whose heart Amalia broke years ago. He’s a Pinkerton now, and the promotion he craves depends on protecting his long-lost love on the unexpectedly treacherous journey across Pennsylvania.
That their physical connection has endured the test of time (and then some) is problematic, to say the least.
In very close quarters, with danger lurking around every curve, with each kiss and illicit touch, the wrongs of the past are righted. But David can’t weather another rejection, especially with his career in jeopardy. And Amalia can’t possibly take a lover, never mind another husband…not with so much depending on her repaired reputation. Not when she’s hurt David—her David—so badly before.
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Dalliances and Devotion would be my pick; Amalia was one of my favorite romance heroines of 2019!
I agree with Lisa F. Dalliances and Devotion is a great book – highly recommended!
I felt really let down by The Southern Book Club for a few reasons. It felt like Hendrix was trying to appeal to both feminist readers and extreme horror readers. People will argue that you can be both, but ehh… :\
It was very exploitative in how it handled the victimization of minor’s; from what I remember the first assault on a child Patricia interrupts is written sort of vaguely but still felt unnecessary given how disposable the victim was to the story progression. She exists to be killed. When the vampire feeds from the protagonist’s 13/14 year old daughter it’s written as if she walks in on a sexual assault complete with bare, thrusting buttocks; one of the characters is raped and it goes into gruesome detail about sexual fluids that doesn’t serve any purpose but to be gross. At the end of the story, the protagonist has a very… not good… inner dialogue about the assault of her daughter.
The victims were predominantly black and poor but the hero was an upper middle-class white woman. The only reoccurring BIPOC character is Ms. Greene and she has a very ancillary role in a story that is about the terrorization of her community. It might have been great discourse about the failure of white women to be allies to BIWOC if it wasn’t coming from a white man who failed to analyze his own demographics accountability/influence in any sort of meaningful way. The white men are garbage in the book, but they are never the ones held to task particularly. Their failures are more from trusting the villain than their own unchecked privilege or callousness. It sort of comes off as “Men are DUMB brutes ladies, am I right?” nudge nudge, wink wink.
The author is a white cis male writing about AFAB/BIPOC characters going through some really intense things, and it doesn’t feel like a work of allyship so much as further exploitation.
My “people argue you can be both” comment was actually unfair, and I know people that are, but the genre does have a misogyny problem that is never meaningfully addressed. There is an argument that extreme horror is supposed to be gross and make you uncomfortable, so of course there’s sexual assault, but if that argument was sincere I really think women being assaulted wouldn’t eclipse men considering the readership and authors are dominantly men.