Kat

So I finished this book last night and boy... was I disappointed!

I was so sure, I was gonna love this book! Everyone else seemed to do so. But all it did was making me feel terribly disappointed and annoyed.

Maybe I wasn't the target audience, maybe I didn't get it, but this book made me so angry and when it didn't make me angry it was kinda blah. (The gore was okay - I really don't mind me some gore! - but all in all too sparce for it to be really horrifying)

I was expecting a group of female friends kicking ass not a group of female punching bags who are kinda known to each other.

Possible spoilers ahead so be warned!

Firstly I really didn't like Patricia. And it's never good when you don't have some sort of sympathy with the main character (at least so far I often struggled with that) or really any of the other characters for that matter. She was just so annoyingly weak. I really am noone who is looking for confrontation but even I wouldn't let myself being treated that shittyly!

Also the strong female friendship everyone raves about felt more like a bunch of acquaintances to me. All of them were more interested in pleasing their shitty husbands than in helping their so called friends. Were wifes really that obidient in the 90s in the American south? I grew up during that time (I should've been around Korey's age) but my Dad was a stay-at-home Dad which wasn't normal in the German south either and not planned at all but even if my Dad had been the breadwinner of the house I can't imagine him treating my Mum like any of those shitbags did! Maybe we were too poor for that to be the case. 🤷🏻‍♀️

And don't even get me started on the "slaying vampires" part. There only ever was one "vampire" and not even a very vampirey one though that wouldn't have been the problem. And the slaying doesn't start until maybe 20 pages before the end and let's just say it's a mess... (what kind of choice was it to doll up your main character and letting her be passed out during the gand finale?)

I can't say much about the blatant racism I felt in every aspect of the book, being a white European myself. But let's just say that I would have preferred Mrs Greene (we never even learned her first name or did I miss that?) to be our main protagonist. Maybe than I would've been able to care. After all she was the hero in the end in my eyes!

So did I not get the satire or deeper meaning? Maybe. But I would argue about this being satirical in any way.

This was my first Grady Hendrix book and I'm really weary about reading another one now. There were quite a few that seemed worth checking out but out of all of those this one felt like the easiest hit for me... 🙈

This was definitely not what I expected!

Went into this completely blind as it was my cover pick for @wickedreading's horror bingo and hard mode includes not knowing the synopsis. So I wasn't expecting reality TV or any of this.

Overall it was a nice read. Nothing out of the ordinary (caught the "twist" pretty much right away) but I liked the humour and wit in it. Was also listening to it as an audiobook and really enjoyed the "full cast" of the transcript parts.

Question is does this count as a haunted house story or not... 🤔

Things I've learned this year:

1. I am a total sucker for Gothic novels!

2. Make it sapphic and I'll love it even more.

This has both of these things and so much more. Loved the atmosphere and the story.

Wow just wow! I loved this book so much, what a rush!

Even though I thought about the twist about Mrs. Baker maybe being one of the sisters and wondering about which sister was which long before it was revealed the overall story still had me in its grips! The end had me sad and happy and just all the feels!

I wish I'd own this book and not lent it from the library. Even though I doubt it's a book I reread or that it would gain anything from a reread, I feel it's a book I would like to own for myself...

Hmm... Sorry... I don't get the hype... This is not horror. Maybe it's too literary for me. 🤷

Also if I wanted to read a travel report about Italy or a gourmet cook book, I would have. As it is I was expecting to read a horror book. Maybe that's on me but yeah...

I can appreciate that it is well written thus the 2.5 stars (even though it got way too pretentious for me from time to time) but sadly the story was mostly boring to me. And I'm really sorry about that cause I was looking forward so much to this.