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.

I received a free audiobook of this title courtesy of the publisher. All thoughts are my own.

I’ve finally read all of Grady Hendrix’s books, and this one might just be my favorite of the bunch. I’d been holding off on this one for years because of the hype. Everyone I know raved about it, and I didn’t want to walk in with sky-high expectations only to be disappointed. But the opposite happened. It lived up to the praise, and then some.

To make it even better, I listened to the fully dramatized audiobook version, and wow! What an experience. It had a full cast, sound effects, background music, the whole thing. It felt like old-school radio theater, only sharper. Every actor brought their role to life, and Dawn Ursula’s main narration gave the whole performance a strong backbone. The only complaint I had was with the music. At times, it felt too loud or oddly placed, pulling me out of the moment rather than enhancing it. But honestly, that’s nitpicking. The production overall was so immersive that it kept me glued to the story.

On the surface, it’s a vampire tale, but like all of Hendrix’s books, there’s much more going on. The setting is Charleston in the 1980s/1990s, and the vibe is pure Southern Gothic suburbia. Think Desperate Housewives, but they’re played by the cast of Steel Magnolias, and one of the vampires from True Blood escaped and took up residence in their neighborhood.

Patricia, our lead, is a housewife whose life feels smaller and smaller every year. Her kids don’t appreciate her, her husband doesn’t take her seriously, and her daily to-do list is endless. Her one escape is her book club, where a group of women gather to talk about true crime and swap gossip. When a charming stranger moves into the neighborhood, Patricia is drawn to him, but then children start disappearing. What begins as a suburban mystery escalates into full-on horror when she realizes he’s not just a creepy guy, but something much worse.

The real genius of this book is the way Hendrix layers the scares. Yes, the vampire is terrifying, but so are the very human problems the women face. There’s the casual misogyny of their husbands, the isolation of suburban motherhood, and the uglier truths about race inequality and gentrification. At times, it was hard to decide what disturbed me more: the bloodsucker preying on the neighborhood or the everyday horrors happening around them. And that’s exactly the point.

By the end, I was both thoroughly entertained and left with plenty to think about. The commentary on gender and race feels just as relevant today as it would have in the ’90s. Some things, unfortunately, haven’t changed nearly enough. That makes the book resonate even more.

If you’ve been holding off on this one like I was, worried it couldn’t possibly live up to the hype, don’t wait any longer. This is Grady Hendrix at his best: creepy, funny, smart, and impossible to put down. Whether you read it in print or go for the full-cast audiobook, you’re in for a hell of a good time. This is another perfect addition to your Halloween TBR.

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