I truly deeply madly in love with this book! More than five gazillion stars! Somebody has to stop my fingers adding entire books of the author to my nearly collapsing Mount TBR! But I cannot stop with only one book. Can I?

They defined this book as mash up of Steel Magnolias-Fried Green Tomatoes and Dracula! No, sir: this is Stepford Wives and Southern Desperate Housewives meet True Blood!

This book is not easy, entertaining reading! It is so smart, gruesome, wild, bloody blended with dark humor, sarcasm, criticizing the role of wives and structures of marriage. But I may tell you this is epic and darkly heart wrenching women friendship book. Their bonding reminded me of Thelma and Louise’s last scene and filled my eyes in tears!

Five regular Southern housewives (at least that’s what their moron husbands think about them!) start a book club to read true crime stories and discuss them! (See! There is nothing ordinary about them. They know their dark sides and they also know how to retrain it!)

Welcome to 90’s Charleston! The story is narrated by Patricia Campbell, one of the members of the book club. She gave up her career as a nurse and married with extremely workaholic and arrogant husband but at least she has young teenage daughter who disrespects her and younger son who is obsessed with Third Reich! And her mother-in-law moved indefinitely to their house, suffers from dementia and is adamant to turn her life into her. But thankfully the other book club members (also her true friends and confidantes right now!) intervened and find Mrs. Greene to help her take care of her mother-in-law.

She is not really happy with her life and the books she read and growing friendship with the girls are the only things brighten her mood. Maybe her life doesn’t suck like she thinks but  WAIT FOR IT! Did HER ELDER NEIGHBOR ATTACK HER AND RIP HER EARLOBE? Yes, weird things can happen in South and stays in South as well! Then her not so nice elderly neighbor dies at the hospital so she pays a visit to her house, carrying a casserole because she’s told, her neighbor’s nephew came to town to take care of her. She meets with charming nephew James (actually she finds him lie on the bed and she thinks he might be dead so she performs CPR! Another interesting way to welcome your new neighbor!) and after his friendly revisit to her house, she gets attracted to him even though her mother-in-law screams a lot when she sees him at their house and confuses the guy with her father’s killer.

Patricia invites James to her book club, helps her to open a proper bank account, drives him to help for daily errands but after her mother-in-law’s suspicious dying (those parts of the book were really disgusting and gruesome! I advise to read those pages with empty stomach!) and local kid’s missing, she starts to get suspicious about her charming new neighbor/friend/crush’s involvement to local kid’s suicides. But of course when she shares her theory with her besties, they are silenced by their know-it-all husbands who are invested with James’ inventive ideas and quite large amount of money Patricia isn’t sure where they came from!

The wives kept their silence till their children’s lives are also in danger. Could they stop this dangerous man? Is he a real man or is he a kind of supernatural creature? Let’s find out!

I have to admit I loved those girls: Slick, Kitty, Grace, Maryellen and let’s not forget the last addition of their club: dear Mrs. Greene! I loved their quirky antics, their loyalty and their secret badass power they’re forced to hide because of their husbands’ mental or physical abuse!

Even though this was harsh, bumpy, bloody reading, I enjoyed every second of it and I wished it would never end! Some of the producers should wake up and realize this book is secret gem and it is needed to be adapted into streaming series. (Especially the heart wrenching story about bitter peaches was remarkable and unforgettable part of this book!)

Overall: I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT! This is one of the best books of the year! Go on, get it and read it!