The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

How it reads

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires is horror (vampire horror, specifically), and its dominant mood is eerie. It's atmospheric and uncanny, with a sense that something is wrong. The pace is moderate — neither a page-turner nor a slow burn — so it holds up whether you read it in long sittings or short ones.

It's set in a small town setting, in the recent past, told in the third person across several viewpoints. Its central concerns are friendship, class and society and survival. In weight it sits in the middle: substantial without being heavy going.

It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending resolves happily. At 410 pages it's an ordinary novel's length. It's well known, the kind of book most keen readers have heard of.