It’s October, so of course we wanted to go with a thematic pick for this month’s book for my long-distance book club. We floated a lot of topics, but I definitely got over the top excited when “vampires” were an option, because I have always had and will always have a soft spot for vampire stories and lore. It is what it is. I’m alright with it. Anyways, this was the winning book. (Though the other recommendations, including NOS4A2 by Joe Hill and Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, have also been added to my vampire-related TBR).

The title of this book does a fantastic job summing up the contents of the plot, actually. This is about a book club in South Carolina. Patricia Campbell and a group of friends start a true crime/thriller book club to help them escape some of the pressures of life, like raising kids, keeping the home clean, caring for invalid in-laws and generally holding everything together for everyone else in domestic and overlooked ways. When James Harris comes to town though, everything is thrown out of cadence. Children start going missing, among other things, and Patricia start to suspect James is the culprit. But James is smart and his (uncountable) years of experience at weaseling his way in and outsmarting everyone around him put this book club in a tough position. And so they enter a years-long fight to help save their town and their children from this supernatural threat that no one else sees.

I have such mixed feelings about this book and it’s going to make this a very hot-cold sort of review. There were some things that I loved! I thought the portrayal of vampires in a, more or less, present-day setting was so well developed (and some of the ways it carried over from the past, too). It absolutely makes sense that people wouldn’t believe what was right before their eyes, because it’s easier to ignore things that make no sense than to try and come to terms with them. And I liked some of the spins on the traditional blood-sucking, light-avoiding, un-killable vampire mythology. It was a great nod to the classic vampire story while adding its own touch. To that end, though the creepy-crawly aspects (the cockroaches and rats and entrail eating), has me in legit grossed-out goosebumps feels, I liked the front and center role they played. It’s a well-known connection, but a horror-based one that is explored a lot less often than the immortality and blood-eating based themes. Along these lines, I felt like the ending was great. It used the best info the book club lades could find, along with a clever use of their southern/house-keeping skills, to bring James Harris’ presence in their town to an end in a very gory-campy (in the good sense) way. And the suspense/thrill of the fact that it may not be truly, definitely over, that there may still be a threat from him in the distant future, gave a perfect ending-feeling of conclusion with a side of doom. I liked that. And, for sure, I loved the way Patricia ended her personal-life story as well.

In addition, I really liked the clear (and I mean very not subtle) themes of middle-aged white men running the show and banding together to the detriment of all others, along with the general ease with which certain populations (Black people, poor people, housewives) are ignored, is some super accurate, and totally believable even in this supernatural context, current day social commentary and metaphor-y-ness. In fact, I actually liked (and was simultaneously terrified by) how on the nose it was that these men all worked and profited together while ignoring anyone else’s pain/struggle (and overlooking some very damning evidence re: the evil within them) because they were getting ahead. There are lots of these types of high society and old money undertones in many traditional vampiric stories (looking at you, Dracula and Twilight), but the way it was pulled out here added some nice extra depth.

But on the other side of things…there was a lot that I took issue with. I totally get that this was supposed to be (at least, I hope it was supposed to be) a satirical look at traditional southern female culture. And I started out really liking it. It could have been offensive, but I think reading it as dark satire helped and was the way it was meant. However, somewhere into the novel, I started to really dislike it. It wasn’t the satire itself, but more the timing of it. I get that there are still likely many suburban southern locales with this kind of living situation for “housewives,” but there were a lot of small things that read more like, to me, the 20s or the 50s or some other further distant past, and not the 90s, which is when it was supposed to be. Like, yea, the “burden of hospitality” (a major theme in this novel) is still very alive. But the number of women represented here that had no power, in so many ways (like not having any of their own financial control/awareness/confidence or the way mental health issues were treated). I actually got really angry because there were so many more legit issues, like domestic abuse, religion being used to manipulate, unequal burden for household/family tasks, and deep racial divides/inequities in housing and social treatment, that really demonstrate issues in internal power dynamic imbalances, that the other things that seemed more stereotypical of earlier decades took away from the seriousness of the rest. Maybe its my personal life experiences and backgrounds and this is all still more common than I know, but like, it ended up feeling really off and uncomfortable to me.

I also was super bothered by how certain things could happen, like very obvious things (like an ear getting bitten off by an old lady or a grandmother being literally eaten to death by rats that then all disappear suddenly), and all the men (especially Patricia’s husband) could be like “you’re making this all up and being crazy and nothing out of line is happening.” Ummmmm what?! There is not a man or husband in my life that wouldn’t be like “this needs further investigation!” if their mother was eaten alive by rats in their own home. Like, seriously. I don’t care how obsessed by work you are, that’s just abnormal. Ugh. And last, I really wasn’t a fan of what happened to one of the book club members, Slick, towards the end. Like, I really hated it. There had to be another terrible, gross way to send a message that wasn’t that, especially with all the non-traditional other vampiric aspects to this book. I just…why does it always, always, always have to come back to that. This is horror/fantasy – be more creative. That is all.

So bottom line, some parts of this were really great. But for me, in the end, I think the parts that weren’t for me just weighed stronger than the parts that were. Plus, for a novel with vampire in the title, this had less actual vampire page-time than I would have liked (because yes, I do love vampires and their legends that much) and the pacing in the middle part really struggled (as in, slowed wayyyyyy down). I’m sad I was so disappointed by this one, after I built up my love for vampires so hardcore with the book club peeps, but thankfully there are lots of other vampire stories out there for me to make up for it with!

“I am not sure what the appropriate gesture is to make toward the family of the woman who bit off your ear, but if you felt absolutely compelled, I certainly wouldn’t take food.”

“She knew what to do if too many people showed up for supper, or if someone arrived early for a party, but what did you do when rats attacked your mother-in-law? Who told you how to cope with that?”

“Everyone’s hungry for our children,” she said, and her voice cracked. “The whole world wants to gobble up colored children, and no matter how many it takes it just licks its lips and wants more.”

“He thinks we’re what we look like on the outside: nice Southern ladies. Let me tell you something…there’s nothing nice about Southern ladies.”

“They weren’t stronger than him, they weren’t smarter, they weren’t more prepared. But circumstances had brought them together and allowed them to succeed where so many others had failed. Patricia knew how they looked, a bunch of silly Southern women, yakking about books over white wine. A bunch of carpool drivers, skinned-knee kissers, errand runners, secret Santas and part-time tooth fairies, with their practical jeans and their festive sweaters. Think of us what you will, she thought, we made mistakes, and probably scarred our children for life, and we froze sandwiches, and forgot car pool, and got divorced. But when the time came, we went the distance.”