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

Cover image from the goodreads website.

Series or Stand Alone: Stand Alone

Release Date: 7 April, 2020

Publisher: Blackstone Publishing

Genre: Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror

ISBN: 9781094136943

Edition: Audiobook (also available in hardback, eBook, and paperback)

Rating: ★★★★☆

Review Written: 27 January, 2021
Warnings: child death, child abuse, abuse of a corpse, rabid humans, death, vivid gore, attempted suicide, infidelity

Summary:  

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 real monster.

Patricia Campbell's life has never felt smaller. Her ambitious husband is too busy to give her a goodbye kiss in the morning, her kids have their own lives, her senile mother-in-law needs constant care, and she's always a step behind on thank-you notes and her endless list of chores. The one thing she has to look forward to is her book club, a close-knit group of Charleston women united by their love of true crime and paperback fiction. At these meetings they're as likely to talk about the Manson family as they are marriage, motherhood, and neighborhood gossip.

This predictable pattern is upended when Patricia meets James Harris, a handsome stranger who moves into the neighborhood to take care of his elderly aunt and ends up joining the book club. James is sensitive and well-read, and he makes Patricia feel things she hasn't felt in twenty years. But there's something off about him. He doesn't have a bank account, he doesn't like going out during the day, and Patricia's mother-in-law insists that she knew him when she was a girl--an impossibility.

When local children go missing, Patricia and the book club members start to suspect James is more of a Bundy than a Beatnik--but no one outside of the book club believes them. Have they read too many true crime books, or have they invited a real monster into their homes?

See more by Grady Hendrix at his website.

[Review] Small Spaces by Katherine Arden

Cover image from the goodreads website.

Series or Stand Alone: Small Spaces #1

Release Date: 25 September, 2018

Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers

Genre: Middle Grade Horror/Middle Grade Fiction/Supernatural/Spooky/Horror

ASIN: 9780525515029

Edition: Paperback (available in Hardback, ebook, and audiobook)

Rating: ★★★★☆

Review Written: 23 November, 2020
Warnings: Mild body horror, themes of death, ghosts, spoilers past the cut.

Summary:  

After suffering a tragic loss, eleven-year-old Ollie only finds solace in books. So when she happens upon a crazed woman at the river threatening to throw a book into the water, Ollie doesn't think--she just acts, stealing the book and running away. As she begins to read the slender volume, Ollie discovers a chilling story about a girl named Beth, the two brothers who both loved her, and a peculiar deal made with "the smiling man," a sinister specter who grants your most tightly held wish, but only for the ultimate price. 

Ollie is captivated by the tale until her school trip the next day to Smoke Hollow, a local farm with a haunting history all its own. There she stumbles upon the graves of the very people she's been reading about. Could it be the story about the smiling man is true? Ollie doesn't have too long to think about the answer to that. On the way home, the school bus breaks down, sending their teacher back to the farm for help. But the strange bus driver has some advice for the kids left behind in his care: "Best get moving. At nightfall they'll come for the rest of you." Nightfall is, indeed, fast descending when Ollie's previously broken digital wristwatch, a keepsake reminder of better times, begins a startling countdown and delivers a terrifying message: RUN. 

Only Ollie and two of her classmates heed the bus driver's warning. As the trio head out into the woods--bordered by a field of scarecrows that seem to be watching them--the bus driver has just one final piece of advice for Ollie and her friends: "Avoid large places. Keep to small." 

And with that, a deliciously creepy and hair-raising adventure begins.

See more by Katherine Arden at her website.