Kindle Edition, 410 pages
English language
Published April 7, 2020 by Quirk Books.
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, …
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?
If you want a low-key horror Spooky Season read like “Valley of the Dolls”-vibe with Dracula in it, that’s your book ^ ^ CW for a lot of misogyny, (domestic) abuse, r*ape, blood & gore. & a dead dog.
The real monster is white hetero patriarchy. And that being the monster, with no LGBT characters, made most of the characters extremely unrelatable. I am not straight, a housewife, a mother, a southerner, or a Christian. The first half of the book, largely following the mundane life of a housewife as the stage is set, was a major slog.
However, it did set the stage for an exciting last half of the book. Once the punches start coming they don't stop coming. The safety of the institutions these women had always relied on crumbles away, and they are forced to choose: live in the fantasy of an idyllic suburban life, or risk it all, seize their independence, and be truly safe with their fates in their own hands.
I would consider this to be a good book, but it gets 3 stars because I found the first half boring. You …
The real monster is white hetero patriarchy. And that being the monster, with no LGBT characters, made most of the characters extremely unrelatable. I am not straight, a housewife, a mother, a southerner, or a Christian. The first half of the book, largely following the mundane life of a housewife as the stage is set, was a major slog.
However, it did set the stage for an exciting last half of the book. Once the punches start coming they don't stop coming. The safety of the institutions these women had always relied on crumbles away, and they are forced to choose: live in the fantasy of an idyllic suburban life, or risk it all, seize their independence, and be truly safe with their fates in their own hands.
I would consider this to be a good book, but it gets 3 stars because I found the first half boring. You may enjoy it more than I did.
To warn potential readers: this book features rape scenes, including child rape.
