**A Wild Ride of a Book: An Analysis of Grady Hendrix's "The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires"**

I have to say, I was thoroughly impressed with Grady Hendrix's latest thriller, "The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires". This book is an insane ride that will keep you on the edge of your seat from start to finish. It's intense, gory, and had me experiencing nightmares - yes, nightmares! So, if you're not into gore or scary stuff, I would probably advise against reading this one.

The book is a meta take on horror tropes, specifically those related to final girls in horror movies. Each of the final girls in the story are reminiscent of iconic characters from movies like "Scream", "Friday the 13th", and "Halloween". Hendrix masterfully weaves together these familiar tropes with his own unique brand of horror, creating a truly unforgettable reading experience.

One of the things that really stood out to me about this book was its focus on the intensity of the plot. It's clear that Hendrix is not afraid to push boundaries and go for broke when it comes to storytelling. The pacing is relentless, with twists and turns that I did not see coming. I found myself completely absorbed in the world of the story, unable to look away from the chaos unfolding before me.

Unfortunately, the mental health aspect of the characters' experiences was somewhat lacking in this book. While the author does touch on the idea of trauma and its impact on the women involved, it's not a theme that is fully explored or developed. I would have loved to see more attention paid to this aspect, as each of these women has clearly been through something deeply disturbing.

Despite this minor critique, I found "The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires" to be an absolutely engrossing and thrilling read. If you're a fan of horror movies or just looking for a wild ride, this book is definitely worth checking out. It's a true page-turner that will keep you guessing until the very end.

**A Comparison to Riley Sager's "Final Girls"**

For those who are familiar with thriller author Riley Sager's work, particularly his 2019 novel "Final Girls", I have to say that Hendrix's book is somewhat more intense and less scary. Now, this might be because I'm a bit of a scaredy-cat, but I genuinely believe that if you're not into horror or gore, Sager's book would be the better choice.

On the other hand, fans of horror movies and tropes will find "The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires" to be right up their alley. It's a true love letter to the genre, with all its familiar trappings and conventions. So, if you're someone who loves horror movies or just wants to experience something new and exciting in the thriller world, this book is definitely worth checking out.

**A Look at Upcoming Thriller Books**

As we count down to July, when several highly anticipated thriller books are set to hit shelves, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement. With three books on my radar - all releasing in quick succession - I'm eager to see how they'll stack up against each other.

From what I've heard so far, "The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires" is shaping up to be one of the most intense and thrilling reads of the summer. While it may not be perfect - particularly when it comes to exploring mental health themes - there's no denying its power as a horror novel.

So, if you're like me and can't wait for July to roll around, I'd love to hear from you! Who are some of your favorite thriller authors or books that you're looking forward to reading this summer? Do you have any recommendations for readers who might be new to the genre? Let's chat in the comments below.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello everyone today i'm here to do another recent reads today is going to be all upcoming really anticipated thrillers that i'm going to talk about that i've already read and i want to share with you my feelings on them so like i said i'm talking about three upcoming anticipated thriller books um they're really anticipated to me i'm sure a lot of you as well they're very popular authors i know a lot of people looking forward to them i was so lucky to get netgalley arcs of all of them so i got to read them early and i'm going to share with you all of my thoughts so the books i'll be talking about today are survive the night by riley sager for your own good by samantha downing and the final girls support group by grady hendricks if you want to hear about one book in particular there are going to be time stamps and chapters down below in case you want to hear about one book but let's get into it because we got a lot to talk about so the first book is survive the night by riley sager this one comes out july 6th so we have a couple months but hopefully this whole video is really designed to share my thoughts and also to help you figure out if you want to read it or not so riley sager is been on the thriller game for a while this is his fifth book i've read all five of his books my favorite book of his hands down is home before dark which got released last year i loved it but i have to say i really enjoyed survive the night so this book takes place in 1991 and we follow our main character charlie who is in college and she is going home to like kind of quit college because a really traumatic thing happened to her at college and so she's looking for a ride to go home i believe she lives in ohio um and she like posts on the ride board and this guy sees it and he's like hey i'm also traveling near you you know we can ride together but i have to leave at like dark like night time and so she's very wary but she's like you know i just really want to get out of campus and so basically that's the whole premise of the book is their car ride this book takes place one whole night hence the title survive the night you get like glimpse of like hour by hour things like that where they're at there's also a big looming threat with charlie because at where she goes to college there's this campus killer who has killed like three or four girls and one of them charlie was very close to so that's very traumatic for her and so she's also trying to escape the campus killer but as the night and drive goes on she wonders what does she know about this josh guy that she is riding in the car with could he be the campus killer so i can't go into much detail with all of these books because they're thrillers the whole point of them is to thrill you to you know surprise you with all of the plot twists and things like that overall i gave this one a four out of five i still love home before dark the best i just i love that book so much but i have to say survive the night is a really strong contender for a riley sager book like i said i've read all of them i would say my favorites are home before dark survive the night and then final girls this other two i wasn't really a huge fan of but but survive the night i really like the whole premise that it told in one night you're also trying to divulge of charlie and her past and what's happened her also with this campus killer and the whole book is full of tension obviously because you're like is this guy that she's riding with the campus killer is he gonna kill her will she make it till dawn that's the whole thing will she actually make it home will she see the light of day and there's lots of twists and turns with thrillers i think there was one i definitely saw coming and then there was a couple that i was pleasantly surprised by but overall i did really enjoy it it's a great one i think to read for you know i think the main times three thrillers are like summer time because they're just fast-paced novels you can just read really quickly outside that's what i do i tend to read a lot of thrillers in the summer and i also read a lot of them you know in the fall and your halloween but this is a great summer thriller because it's 90s it talks a lot about kind of classic horror movies and things like that because charlie is really into movies and she even throughout this book she kind of dazes off and she goes within her own movies where she'll see predicaments happen and then she'll kind of wake up and she'll wonder if that really happened or not so it's almost kind of like a hallucination so i guess you could call her an unreliable narrator but it was entertaining it was good i would recommend it if you love rileysaker's books i think a lot of people will really be happy with it moving on to for your own good by samantha downing this is her third book i've read all three of them my favorite book by her is for sure my lovely wife i oh that's one of my favorite thrillers of all time i did enjoy her um next book he started it and then we have this one for your own good which i didn't really love i don't know i think it's got pretty good readings i just didn't connect well with it so for your own good takes place this private school called belmont academy and you follow a slew of characters but the main people you follow are this teacher teddy who is a teacher and you also follow zack so teddy is a teacher that um he loves teaching students but he's also horrible that's all i'll put it at he wants to you know he teaches at this private academy so he sees these rich entitled kids all the time and one of them is zach and he really wants to like teach zach a lesson because that gets away with everything he's got rich parents he gets whatever he wants and you know he fails zach on occasion and it like really blows up zach's world so get a point of view from zach who is really struggling at home because his parents are so hard on him if he brings home like less than a it's like not good and his parents buckled down more on him so him and teddy have this very tumultuous student-teacher relationship we also follow a whole bunch of other teachers in belmont academy who are all doing things like for the good of the students and basically what happens in this book is a whole bunch of murders happen with the teachers and things like that and nobody knows who's doing it and with the book there's no secret of who's committing the murders there's not a ton of plot twists it's mainly just about unraveling all of these characters psyches and just like watching a whole bunch of like people that think they're doing the right thing in their mind but it's really not and just teddy oh i think i just didn't love this book because um i don't i don't necessarily have to like like every character of books i read i've read several where the characters are meant to be unlikable and i love them but this one i don't know i just kind of wanted more from it i just felt like the ending was kind of left at the end i don't know see i'm having such conflicting thoughts about this now the ending i was gonna say left me kind of unhappy but then as i think about it i was like it was a pretty good ending i liked the way they ended it because i feel like it's just gonna be the cycle keeps continuing of what somebody thinks is the right thing but could not be and it's just it's a wild ride of a book i'll say that i ended up giving it a three out of five i just i didn't love it as much i don't i wish i could say why i just all the characters are twisted all of them have their motives all of them have done a lot of bad things so it's like who do you root for the one who's done less bad things you know things like that but it really gets into like the life behind a private school of teachers versus students you know of rich kids versus you know these poor teachers that don't get enough you know that have to teach these rich privileged kids and it's interesting i think you'll like it if you like the whole private school setting i'm so so on that i like some private school books some not but it was interesting i'm glad i read it i will continue to read samantha downing's works because i do like her writing a lot and it is very interesting this is just probably my least favorite ever book sadly but at the end of the day i still enjoyed it i forgot to say for your own good comes out on july 20th so you've got a couple months for that as well i apologize and the last book i'm going to talk about today is the final girl support group by grady hendricks this one comes out july 13th so all these books will be available to you within two months you can hold out you can wait i promise they're worth it um this one definitely wins for the wildest one like it was bananas like this whole book just bananas like i i've only read one other gritty hendrix book before and that was his release last year called the southern's book club's guide to slaying vampires he must have an affinity for long titles and i really enjoyed that one i think this one could probably classify his horror honestly because it scared the crap out of me but basically this whole book if you can't tell by the title it's all about final girls and what are final girls final girls are that classic trope within like early horror movies i wanted to say early horror movies just kind of horror movies in general where there's always one girl left standing and she is the final girl the ones that defeated the evil you know you think of scream think of halloween things like that movies i really haven't seen because your girl's scared but i'll read about it apparently this book follows one of our final girls lynette and lynette obviously had a final girl moment happen to her when she was younger and it has really taken a lot on her like she has become a recluse she is very very like agoraphobic i would say she only leaves her house for like going to the grocery store and to go to her final girl support group um monthly meeting and that's where she meets a whole bunch of other final girls that have also experienced their final girls moment like the last one standing and so she like is very like paranoid she takes a lot of detours with like where she goes she's very very like she stays on top of it and then she notices that somebody is starting to kill all of the final girls nobody believes her like nobody in her group believes that they're killing final girls let's the only one that's like somebody is out to get all of us so she goes on this you know chase to try to figure out like who is trying to kill us and it's it's just an insane book it is intense it's gonna probably scare the crap out of you it is gory it it gave me nightmares so i'll say that this one obviously is a lot of tropes with kind of horror movies each of the final girls you'll hear about their kind of final girl scenario and they're very very reminiscent of like scream friday the 13th halloween um things like that this is kind of meta in a way i've heard a lot of people say that if you like cabin in the woods movie which i haven't watched but i know the whole plot line because i watch found fix that explains everything um so maybe if you like that movie you'll like this so it is kind of meta in that way where it's really trying to really focus in on those tropes but it was just intense like i would say if you're like really not into gore really not into a lot of really scary stuff i would probably not read this if you're into that i think you'll enjoy it but this one was the most intense out of all the thrillers hands down i gave it a four out of five when i first read it i only gave it a three and a half because i was like oh my gosh but the more i thought about it and the more i can't stop thinking about it because it's so freaking like just it's ingrained in my head which is probably the best thing i'm like i gotta bump it up to a four because there was there were several plot twists that um i did not see coming he did it really well but i don't know man greedy henders just goes for it like it it's intense it's a lots it's something you know i really wish they would have also focused the one downside i would say the mental health that all these women must have have to deal with with being a final girl they do meet for a support group but beyond that they don't talk much about the mental effect the mental health tolls that it's taken upon them because when you read about what happened to them you're like how are you okay like i got um and i really wish they would have delved more into that and made it more you know normalized for therapy and other things because they didn't really talk about that a lot and i just really wish it would have been talked about because each of these women had such really insane traumatic things happen to them that i'm like this must have affected them in some sort of way but at the end of the day it's a if you just want a wild ride of a gory final girls type of book go for it this obviously when i first saw the title and everything it reminded me of final girls priority sager which is a book you guessed about final girls which got released like four years ago i want to say so which one of the two i like more it's hard to say like if you love just final girl trope city that gives you reminiscent of like the old movies with you know seeing that final girl support group will do if you want kind of maybe a less intense and less scary one i would probably recommend riley sager's one because it's just it's a lot less scary i mean maybe i'm just a huge chicken so take this with a grain of salt just grady hendrix definitely like he's not afraid to go there i'll just say that but i mean if you're a fan of horror movies and stuff like that and tropes this one will you'll probably really enjoy so i gave it a four out of five so there you have it those are my thoughts and feelings on three upcoming thriller books that i know a lot of you are anticipating they all come out in july i think they're all great to read in july back-to-back because that is what i did which i don't know if i'd recommend for you know your scariness because it didn't help me at all i would love to hear if i got you excited for any of these books or maybe one of them maybe you'll steer clear of one of them you'll definitely read i would love to hear and also you know what your favorite thriller books coming out this summer that you can't wait to read because i know i will definitely be reading more very very soon thank you all so much for watching and i will see you my next video bye youhello everyone today i'm here to do another recent reads today is going to be all upcoming really anticipated thrillers that i'm going to talk about that i've already read and i want to share with you my feelings on them so like i said i'm talking about three upcoming anticipated thriller books um they're really anticipated to me i'm sure a lot of you as well they're very popular authors i know a lot of people looking forward to them i was so lucky to get netgalley arcs of all of them so i got to read them early and i'm going to share with you all of my thoughts so the books i'll be talking about today are survive the night by riley sager for your own good by samantha downing and the final girls support group by grady hendricks if you want to hear about one book in particular there are going to be time stamps and chapters down below in case you want to hear about one book but let's get into it because we got a lot to talk about so the first book is survive the night by riley sager this one comes out july 6th so we have a couple months but hopefully this whole video is really designed to share my thoughts and also to help you figure out if you want to read it or not so riley sager is been on the thriller game for a while this is his fifth book i've read all five of his books my favorite book of his hands down is home before dark which got released last year i loved it but i have to say i really enjoyed survive the night so this book takes place in 1991 and we follow our main character charlie who is in college and she is going home to like kind of quit college because a really traumatic thing happened to her at college and so she's looking for a ride to go home i believe she lives in ohio um and she like posts on the ride board and this guy sees it and he's like hey i'm also traveling near you you know we can ride together but i have to leave at like dark like night time and so she's very wary but she's like you know i just really want to get out of campus and so basically that's the whole premise of the book is their car ride this book takes place one whole night hence the title survive the night you get like glimpse of like hour by hour things like that where they're at there's also a big looming threat with charlie because at where she goes to college there's this campus killer who has killed like three or four girls and one of them charlie was very close to so that's very traumatic for her and so she's also trying to escape the campus killer but as the night and drive goes on she wonders what does she know about this josh guy that she is riding in the car with could he be the campus killer so i can't go into much detail with all of these books because they're thrillers the whole point of them is to thrill you to you know surprise you with all of the plot twists and things like that overall i gave this one a four out of five i still love home before dark the best i just i love that book so much but i have to say survive the night is a really strong contender for a riley sager book like i said i've read all of them i would say my favorites are home before dark survive the night and then final girls this other two i wasn't really a huge fan of but but survive the night i really like the whole premise that it told in one night you're also trying to divulge of charlie and her past and what's happened her also with this campus killer and the whole book is full of tension obviously because you're like is this guy that she's riding with the campus killer is he gonna kill her will she make it till dawn that's the whole thing will she actually make it home will she see the light of day and there's lots of twists and turns with thrillers i think there was one i definitely saw coming and then there was a couple that i was pleasantly surprised by but overall i did really enjoy it it's a great one i think to read for you know i think the main times three thrillers are like summer time because they're just fast-paced novels you can just read really quickly outside that's what i do i tend to read a lot of thrillers in the summer and i also read a lot of them you know in the fall and your halloween but this is a great summer thriller because it's 90s it talks a lot about kind of classic horror movies and things like that because charlie is really into movies and she even throughout this book she kind of dazes off and she goes within her own movies where she'll see predicaments happen and then she'll kind of wake up and she'll wonder if that really happened or not so it's almost kind of like a hallucination so i guess you could call her an unreliable narrator but it was entertaining it was good i would recommend it if you love rileysaker's books i think a lot of people will really be happy with it moving on to for your own good by samantha downing this is her third book i've read all three of them my favorite book by her is for sure my lovely wife i oh that's one of my favorite thrillers of all time i did enjoy her um next book he started it and then we have this one for your own good which i didn't really love i don't know i think it's got pretty good readings i just didn't connect well with it so for your own good takes place this private school called belmont academy and you follow a slew of characters but the main people you follow are this teacher teddy who is a teacher and you also follow zack so teddy is a teacher that um he loves teaching students but he's also horrible that's all i'll put it at he wants to you know he teaches at this private academy so he sees these rich entitled kids all the time and one of them is zach and he really wants to like teach zach a lesson because that gets away with everything he's got rich parents he gets whatever he wants and you know he fails zach on occasion and it like really blows up zach's world so get a point of view from zach who is really struggling at home because his parents are so hard on him if he brings home like less than a it's like not good and his parents buckled down more on him so him and teddy have this very tumultuous student-teacher relationship we also follow a whole bunch of other teachers in belmont academy who are all doing things like for the good of the students and basically what happens in this book is a whole bunch of murders happen with the teachers and things like that and nobody knows who's doing it and with the book there's no secret of who's committing the murders there's not a ton of plot twists it's mainly just about unraveling all of these characters psyches and just like watching a whole bunch of like people that think they're doing the right thing in their mind but it's really not and just teddy oh i think i just didn't love this book because um i don't i don't necessarily have to like like every character of books i read i've read several where the characters are meant to be unlikable and i love them but this one i don't know i just kind of wanted more from it i just felt like the ending was kind of left at the end i don't know see i'm having such conflicting thoughts about this now the ending i was gonna say left me kind of unhappy but then as i think about it i was like it was a pretty good ending i liked the way they ended it because i feel like it's just gonna be the cycle keeps continuing of what somebody thinks is the right thing but could not be and it's just it's a wild ride of a book i'll say that i ended up giving it a three out of five i just i didn't love it as much i don't i wish i could say why i just all the characters are twisted all of them have their motives all of them have done a lot of bad things so it's like who do you root for the one who's done less bad things you know things like that but it really gets into like the life behind a private school of teachers versus students you know of rich kids versus you know these poor teachers that don't get enough you know that have to teach these rich privileged kids and it's interesting i think you'll like it if you like the whole private school setting i'm so so on that i like some private school books some not but it was interesting i'm glad i read it i will continue to read samantha downing's works because i do like her writing a lot and it is very interesting this is just probably my least favorite ever book sadly but at the end of the day i still enjoyed it i forgot to say for your own good comes out on july 20th so you've got a couple months for that as well i apologize and the last book i'm going to talk about today is the final girl support group by grady hendricks this one comes out july 13th so all these books will be available to you within two months you can hold out you can wait i promise they're worth it um this one definitely wins for the wildest one like it was bananas like this whole book just bananas like i i've only read one other gritty hendrix book before and that was his release last year called the southern's book club's guide to slaying vampires he must have an affinity for long titles and i really enjoyed that one i think this one could probably classify his horror honestly because it scared the crap out of me but basically this whole book if you can't tell by the title it's all about final girls and what are final girls final girls are that classic trope within like early horror movies i wanted to say early horror movies just kind of horror movies in general where there's always one girl left standing and she is the final girl the ones that defeated the evil you know you think of scream think of halloween things like that movies i really haven't seen because your girl's scared but i'll read about it apparently this book follows one of our final girls lynette and lynette obviously had a final girl moment happen to her when she was younger and it has really taken a lot on her like she has become a recluse she is very very like agoraphobic i would say she only leaves her house for like going to the grocery store and to go to her final girl support group um monthly meeting and that's where she meets a whole bunch of other final girls that have also experienced their final girls moment like the last one standing and so she like is very like paranoid she takes a lot of detours with like where she goes she's very very like she stays on top of it and then she notices that somebody is starting to kill all of the final girls nobody believes her like nobody in her group believes that they're killing final girls let's the only one that's like somebody is out to get all of us so she goes on this you know chase to try to figure out like who is trying to kill us and it's it's just an insane book it is intense it's gonna probably scare the crap out of you it is gory it it gave me nightmares so i'll say that this one obviously is a lot of tropes with kind of horror movies each of the final girls you'll hear about their kind of final girl scenario and they're very very reminiscent of like scream friday the 13th halloween um things like that this is kind of meta in a way i've heard a lot of people say that if you like cabin in the woods movie which i haven't watched but i know the whole plot line because i watch found fix that explains everything um so maybe if you like that movie you'll like this so it is kind of meta in that way where it's really trying to really focus in on those tropes but it was just intense like i would say if you're like really not into gore really not into a lot of really scary stuff i would probably not read this if you're into that i think you'll enjoy it but this one was the most intense out of all the thrillers hands down i gave it a four out of five when i first read it i only gave it a three and a half because i was like oh my gosh but the more i thought about it and the more i can't stop thinking about it because it's so freaking like just it's ingrained in my head which is probably the best thing i'm like i gotta bump it up to a four because there was there were several plot twists that um i did not see coming he did it really well but i don't know man greedy henders just goes for it like it it's intense it's a lots it's something you know i really wish they would have also focused the one downside i would say the mental health that all these women must have have to deal with with being a final girl they do meet for a support group but beyond that they don't talk much about the mental effect the mental health tolls that it's taken upon them because when you read about what happened to them you're like how are you okay like i got um and i really wish they would have delved more into that and made it more you know normalized for therapy and other things because they didn't really talk about that a lot and i just really wish it would have been talked about because each of these women had such really insane traumatic things happen to them that i'm like this must have affected them in some sort of way but at the end of the day it's a if you just want a wild ride of a gory final girls type of book go for it this obviously when i first saw the title and everything it reminded me of final girls priority sager which is a book you guessed about final girls which got released like four years ago i want to say so which one of the two i like more it's hard to say like if you love just final girl trope city that gives you reminiscent of like the old movies with you know seeing that final girl support group will do if you want kind of maybe a less intense and less scary one i would probably recommend riley sager's one because it's just it's a lot less scary i mean maybe i'm just a huge chicken so take this with a grain of salt just grady hendrix definitely like he's not afraid to go there i'll just say that but i mean if you're a fan of horror movies and stuff like that and tropes this one will you'll probably really enjoy so i gave it a four out of five so there you have it those are my thoughts and feelings on three upcoming thriller books that i know a lot of you are anticipating they all come out in july i think they're all great to read in july back-to-back because that is what i did which i don't know if i'd recommend for you know your scariness because it didn't help me at all i would love to hear if i got you excited for any of these books or maybe one of them maybe you'll steer clear of one of them you'll definitely read i would love to hear and also you know what your favorite thriller books coming out this summer that you can't wait to read because i know i will definitely be reading more very very soon thank you all so much for watching and i will see you my next video bye you\n"