What do you say about a novel that combines horror, mystery, Southern charm, and a coming-of-age story? Lindy Ryan’s Bless Your Heart is about four strong women in the Evans family who run a funeral parlor in their Southeast Texas hometown. But, they’re caretakers who protect the town against the Strigoi, defined by Ducey Evans, the family matriarch, as ghouls, the monsters who inspired every story about horrible creatures. What can I say? Those Strigoi are violent creatures who slaughter their victims in gruesome, gory ways. If you don’t want to read those passages, skip the book.

By 1999, the three oldest in the family have already dealt with a violent time fifteen years earlier that shattered their relationship with the local sheriff, and left two of the women without the men they loved. Ducey, at eighty, is the unflappable matriarch. Her daughter, Lenore, experiments, trying to keep the dead from rising again. Lenore’s daughter, Grace, was a teenager with a baby when she saw her world shattered, but she has taken her place in the family business. Now, Grace’s daughter, Luna, is fifteen, and restless, interested in boys. All three of the older women worry they waited too long to tell her about her family history.

A few of the living were the first to realize the dead were rising, but they didn’t survive to tell anyone. Deputy Roger Taylor, a man who always loved Grace, was the first outsider to know something was wrong when he’s called to a scene with blood, guts, and no body. It takes him a while to realize the Evans women are right in the middle of whatever is happening in their community.

Blood, guts, gore. As the Evans women fight the rising of the Strigoi, they also have to tell Luna about the past, and her role in the family. But, before Luna can learn too much, there’s a dramatic confrontation that will change the Evans family forever.

While I don’t normally enjoy books told in multiple voices, it works for Ryan’s Bless Your Heart. It’s important for the Evans women, the victims, and Deputy Roger Taylor and the sheriff to have voices in this story. That technique provides the characters with individuality, and differentiates their personalities.

Bless Your Heart isn’t for everyone. It’s too gruesome and gory for many. But, those looking for a horror story featuring strong Southern women might want to give it a try.

Lindy Ryan’s website is https://www.lindyryanwrites.com/

Bless Your Heart by Lindy Ryan. Minotaur Books, 2024. ISBN 9781250888884 (hardcover), 304p.

FTC Full Disclosure – The publisher sent an ARC of the book, with no promise of a review.