It's 3.5⭐

I really liked the approach and that the story is told in different voices. It's been a long time since I read something about vampires and this was refreshing, the lore they used came out of the commercial/conventional of recent times.

I found it light and enjoyable, although there are moments of quite a bit of tension. The criticism of prejudice and discrimination was very well mixed with the theme and characters.

I will definitely be looking for more Lindy Ryan books.

Thank you @netgalley for providing me the ebook in exchange for my honest opinion.

mini synopsis: four generations of Evans women have kept the town safe with their funeral parlor. Why you may ask? Well sometimes the dead have unfinished business & that’s their specialty!

I saw a reviewer on goodreads say this is a mix of Elle Cosimano & Grady Hendrix which perfectly sums up this book! It’s a little wacky & silly like Finlay Donovan, with off the wall shenanigans (maybe the dead banging on a freezer) mixed with silly horror like Southern Book Club (actual vampires?!) I really enjoyed all the characters, the generations of evans women. I also enjoyed getting little pieces of other towns peoples POV. I think my favorite was Luna bc I felt like we were right there with her wondering what was going on! This is a marked as a series but I’m wondering what is going to happen next!

This book was too much for me while I am dealing with family health issues. My regrets and I apologize for not reading the synopsis more thoroughly when requested.

A dash of Sweet Magnolias, a splash of Salem’s Lot, and a sprinkle of The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires and you’ll get close to this hysterical, absurd, cozy horror novel, Bless Your Heart by Lindy Ryan. This book is a whole lot of fun and the audio narration is top notch!

Review | Bless Your Heart

I’ve been loving the number of books publishing that are set in the 90s. That time period just barely scrapes by as old enough to have a completely different vibe, but not so old that we are calling these historical fiction (yet). Those hazy days before cell phones and social media made us all perhaps a bit too connected to one another allow for stories like this to shine.

What’s Bless Your Heart about?

It’s 1999 in southeast Texas and the Evans family is busy as ever at their funeral parlor (the only one in town). Four generations of Evans women still work together on their family business—great-grandma Ducey, grandma Lenore, mama Grace, and teenager Luna. The Evans women have worked to put ‘That Godawful Mess’—a tragic incident fifteen years earlier—behind them. It claimed the lives of Grace and Lenore’s husbands in relatively short order, and it’s left an air of gossip surrounding the Evans women that they can’t escape.

Is it karma, then, when the biggest town gossip Mina Jean Murphy dies unexpectedly and ends up in their funeral parlor? (As an aside, how fitting is the name “Mina Jean” for a southern busybody?) Mina Jean never met a cigarette she could turn away, and the cancer finally took her. But not long after her body arrives at the Evan’s funeral parlor to be prepared for burial, it turns out that her body isn’t quite as dead as it seemed. Mina Jean is in the middle of having her funeral make up applied (Vamp lipstick is a nice touch), when her body rises right up from her coffin. Thankfully the Evans women are always prepared with a silver blade close at hand.

As the Evans women know better than anyone, Mina Jean’s undead rising is only the beginning of another flare that links to That Godawful Mess and it’s time for them to bring Luna into the fold. They have protected her as long as they can; the Evans women are the only ones who can stop the Strigoi—a supernatural creature they refer to as the “original vampire”—and prevent the plague from spreading to body after body. As the Evans women tackle the rising problem and try to discover who is behind the return of the Strigoi, they begin to realize that in a family and town with so many dark secrets, dead bodies aren’t the only thing you hope stays buried…

Why should you read it?

Don’t let the cute title and cover fool you into thinking this is a fluffy book—I would firmly consider this cozy horror. The book is humorous, but it has it’s share of (not overly graphic) gore. This is a book about the undead, after all. I personally didn’t find it too gory, but I think that depends on how much you can tolerate. I can handle up to a light-to-moderate amount and presented in a way that isn’t too dark—this book hit well within my range.

Lindy Ryan brings a wonderful wittiness to the dialogue in this book that is balanced perfectly with the southern drawl and charm. I listened to the audiobook which was narrated by Stephanie Németh-Parker and she brought that mix of biting wit and southern charm to life through this book. Ironically (given that this does have some gore), I think the audiobook might be the way to go over the physical book if you worry about it being too much. In the audiobook, those moments slid right by like a cold glass of lemonade, whereas reading the words can make you fixate on them longer and get stuck. Just my advice though!

Through alternating chapters, the reader gets the full spectrum of how people in this small town are finding out what is going on (with heavy emphasis on the Evans women). Luna, for instance, hasn’t been brought into the loop about the Strigoi or the general vampire slaying and undead burials that her family has done for generations. Luna’s mother Grace also is clearly carrying a heavier burden through the book—her chapters aren’t as sarcastic and light hearted as those narrated by grandma Lenore and great-grandma Ducey (who are, as the southerners say, a ‘hoot’). You’ll find out why Grace is responding that way as the events unfold and you learn the full truth about ‘That Godawful Mess’. That happens later in the story so just know going in that you’ll get the answers, but they come when it’s time for Luna to learn them as well.

Is there anything I’d change?

I saw another reviewer remark that Grace and Andy (Luna’s boyfriend) don’t have enough character development for their storylines to pay off at the end. I agree completely, and I think this is more true for Andy than it is for Grace, but it applies to both. There needs to be enough investment in their relationships with Luna for the emotional impact that their story arcs carry. Perhaps Ryan made the creative decision that she wanted to stick to dark humor as the tone for this book and worried about anything emotional weighing it down. I can’t say for sure because I read it the way it is. My only thought was that perhaps an epilogue might have helped with this, showing Luna and the other characters months or a year after the events of the book. We needed more of Ryan’s signature humor at the end—something we a bit of a wink and a sugar-coated verbal jab at the antagonists, delivered as sweetly as southern iced tea.

Final Thoughts

This book is absolutely a delight to read! It’s fun, dark, bizarre, and witty. Ryan’s writing adds the perfect comedic tone to the book, and Stephanie Németh-Parker’s narration on the audiobook brought it to life. If you’re a fan of Grady Hendrix, you’ll love this book.

Thank you to Minotaur Books and Macmillan Audio for my copy. Opinions are my own.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for this amazing ARC!

Well…Bless Your Heart, has stolen my heart and then some. I’d say it’s horror light, murder-mystery, family drama and comedy filled. Reminded me of my fav Grady Hendrix.

I never wanted to be apart of a funeral home family until now! The Evan’s family have been the town funeral home, and have been putting the dead to rest in more ways than one!

Four generations- Ducey, Lenore, Grace and Luna ( who’s learning there’s a lot more to this business and her moms over protectiveness) have been passing down what they learn and stories to each Evan’s woman. It’s their calling.

I loved the new take on the “living dead/ vampire” scene! It felt new and fresh. I’m hoping there’s a second book. So good!!

5/5 ⭐️

The Evans women own the funeral parlor in town. But they sometimes have to kill the “undead”. It seems the whole town is now under attack. And all the Evans women may have to take up their blades just to make everything go back the way it was. In other words, what rises up must go back down!

Well! This was not exactly what I was expecting. Y’all know I do not read the blurb and I should not have chosen this book. Just not my genre…you would think I would have gathered that from the cover…but the title Bless Your Heart got me. I was expecting a more light-hearted, fun, southern read! I was bamboozled!

This tale is a bit gruesome and graphic. However, I did enjoy the characters and the hunt to save the town. So, if you like vampires and people who come back to life…THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU!

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The narrator, Stephanie Németh-Parker did ok. But, there were several places that required very raspy voices. Just didn’t sit well with me.

I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review.

Bless your heart is one blood thirsty story. We have sisters who own the only funeral parlor in town. They are kept busy because the town isn’t what it seems. Luna has a grandmother and aunts that run the parlor while she tries to run her life with school, a job and a boy crush. Something happened 15 years before that everyone would just rather forget. But the quiet little town doesn’t get to keep their secrets buried. When Mina Murphy, the town gossip comes into the parlor she decides she doesn’t want to stay dead. From there the story keeps you alive with all the shenanigans and going ons. . The story is so filling you do wish that Ms Ryan will bring more stories about the Evan sisters to life.

Bless Your Heart is the first in the brand new Bless Your Heart series by Lindy Ryan.
This was so much fun and bizarre and a total blast!
A humorous horror with a murder mystery underneath.
Lindy Ryan has such an incredibly unique and compelling writing style that I was sucked into this book so quickly and was honestly sad to see when it ended!
Inthoroughly enjoyed this book. It was a totally captivating read.
It was quite unusual and I couldn’t wait to find out what was going to happen.
I literally couldn't put it down.
And I can’t wait to see book two!

Thank You NetGalley and Minotaur Books for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

The Evans are a multigenerational family of women that run the funeral home in a small Texas town. Calling themselves Caretakers, they also have a side gig of turning the undead into the fully dead.
They’ve been good at keeping this under wraps until things start escalating again and Luna, the youngest Evans, might be at the heart of it.

These are not the sexy southern vampires of another series you might know. One of the women explains that the Strigoi are ghouls, mostly mindless dangerous rotting creatures.
This actually reads more like zombies than vampire to me? My opinion did end up changing as the story went on, but … telling would be spoilers!

A little slow paced, a few hefty doses of gore, pins and pagers for late 90’s nostalgia
I enjoyed the strong family of women and all their secrets refusing to stay buried
The book wasn’t fully what I expected, but still interesting

Thanks to NetGalley and SMP for the arc

“Not all family was blood, and—as far as Luna was concerned—not all blood was family.”

Fun! Funny! Fanatic women! Bless Your Heart is a light, yet somewhat gory, take on horror. It’s gore…with humor? Like I said, so fun.

This story is a little bit True Blood and a little bit The Walking Dead. And maybe a dash of a darker Steel Magnolias, with a funeral home instead of a hair salon as the career of choice.

The audiobook really elevated the story for me, helping me to get lost in this crazy world.

“Darkness was like a disease once it got its teeth in you. A hungry thing that didn’t let go. Sometimes you had to feed it, keep it satiated, to stop it from spreading.”

Thank you to Netgalley, St. Martin’s Press, Minotaur Books, and the author for the ARC and ALC in exchange for an honest review.

This was one of the most campy fun things I’ve read in awhile. It felt like if the Practial Magic Owens Sisters were small town southern vampire hunters. There were a few times I had to pause and say YUCK but honestly between the family dynamic and trying to figure the whodunit it just made the story move along. This was a truly unique take on small town murder mystery and I loved it.

I did listen to Bless Your Heart on audio this past week driving to and from work and it was highly entertaining and completely outside my normal genre. It is horror story of a small southern town in the late 1990s where zombies are terrorizing the town. But it is also funny, laugh out loud funny. And not actually scary because I hate scary things. It was filled with larger than life and quirky characters, southern charm and witty banter. And the narrator had a southern accent to really immerse you in the setting.

A family of women in Texas have been fighting the undead for years. It seems like the original strigoi aka vampire is back and feeding on people. They must find the culprit before it’s too late.

I thought this was a unique concept, but I think there were too many shifts in narrators. I think this would’ve been better with one and then maybe side views of other events. There was just too much switching to really enjoy it.

Thank you to Netgalley & MacMillan for the ARC of Bless Your Heart.

This is an example of a pure campy horror masterpiece! And it's available TOMORROW! Get ready for it!

Bless Your Hearts starts off with a bang and never lets up. You have four generations of women who own and operate the town funeral home, and they take it upon themselves to make sure the town stays safe. There's a mystery - where are the strigoi coming from, who's raising them up? There's a huge family secret that no one seems to want to reveal to the youngest Evans woman. And there's a creepy new guy in town that seems a little suspish.

This book truly has it all. Ducey, the oldest Evans, is hilarious. She is witty and no-nonsense, and you can't help but fall in love with her. The youngest Evans, Luna, is vulnerable but sharp as she tries to navigate and figure out what's going on with her family and her town. The secondary characters are all interesting, and you'll care just as much about them. @lindyryanwrites has crafted the perfect mix of characters with perfect story-telling that's funny, smart, and sometimes pretty gross! The ending is so unexpected in the best and worst of ways. I loved every second I spent with Bless Your Heart!

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Horror (but the fun kind)
pub. date: 04.09.24

Bless Your Heart by Lindy Ryan is the first book in a new series about the Evans women they live in southeastern Texas in a little town where strange things happen the women consist of Ducey Gracie Nana and Luna they’re basically the undertakers of the town and have a funeral Home where they also live. For the past 16 years Lunas life has been normal with the exception of living in a funeral home but when deceased local farmer Ed Boon comes back to life with murder on his mind lunar will learn a history she didn’t know she had. Her great grandmother Ducey tells her the Evans women or the guardians for keeping their little town safe from the Stragoi . Luna does her best to grasp what her great grandmother is telling her it sounds like these creatures are just like vampires but they can only exist in this little town and her family or at least the females are the only ones that know not only about them but how to kill them. The problem doesn’t stop with Ed Boon as a matter of a fact it will get much worse long before it gets better and she will learn things about her old friends and new not to mention a lot of the town people but it will be the love of a dog that marks the end of the nightmare. Just know at the end of this book I felt so bad for lunar the ending was so bittersweet but I am definitely going to be down to read more from this world. I love the characters especially the deputy her family and Crane. I feel bad for Gracie being a single mother and having the problems she did with lunar but that just made the ending even more bittersweet I love this book and in my opinion it is a total five star read the book is set in 1999 something I should’ve mentioned in the beginning but OMG it is so good I loved it loved it loved it! This is definitely my kind of book! I want to thank Lindy Ryan, Saint martins press and net Galley for this great free arc please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.

Bless Your Heart is a historical horror novel set in 1999 Texas. Initially I was really into the story and read the first 70% in two big chunks. The last 30% was more of a slog as we headed into the climax of the story and then I didn't like the ending at all.

The characters were centered around the 4 Evans women, but I felt like having all their viewpoints, plus townspeople made the book jump around too much. I didn't feel that Lenore and Grace had distinctive characters and Ducey felt like mad old woman cliche. The horror parts were done well with just the right amount of blood and gore, but the mythology itself felt lacking. There was no deep dive into the actual background and I was left wanting more. The ending felt abrupt and not well explained and I think I would have it liked that part better, but if the story explained the ghouls better.

Overall I didn't really care for the book and if this is the first part of a series, I don't plan to continue with the rest.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and Netgalley for the arc for review purposes.

Bless Your Heart by Lindy Ryan was such a pleasant surprise. The title and cover led me to believe it would be another Southern quaint story with accidental vampire hunters (huntresses?) but do not judge this book by the cover! The story was deep, gruesome, and engaging. The Evans family runs the small-town funeral home and protects the citizens from danger coming back from the dead. It's also a great story of relationships through the generations of the Evans family. The writing is excellent, fast-paced and I truly couldn't put it down.

Initially, I was totally into this story. The writing was engaging, and I loved the quirky characters.

But by the one-third mark, pacing began to drag and content was repetitive. The story felt a lot longer than 300 pages.

Expectations were also a problem for me. The description led me to believe this would be a comical vampire story. It’s much more of a zombie vibe, and zombies aren’t really my thing.

I kept reading because I did care about the characters, and they were a lot of fun to hang out with. But I admit to skimming chunks where the same information was repeated over and over.

I requested this book however I had no idea how horror-ish it would get. I really struggled to finish. Fairly, I think it was all me. I just don’t like vampire/ghost books and I shouldn’t have requested.

Thanks to NETGALLY for my audiobook!

Bless Your Heart by Lindy Ryan is the first book in a new series by the same title, Bless You Heart. This series is a mix of humorous horror with a murder mystery underneath and does tell the story by changing the point of view between multiple characters in the book.

The Evans Funeral Parlor is a family business and for years the Evans woman have been running it without incident. Things have been running so smoothly for the Evan’s family that teenager, Luna, doesn’t even know the real business that the family take care of behind the door of the funeral parlor.

The day has come however for all of the four generations of Evans women to jump right back into business when the body of Mina Jean Murphy is brought to the parlor and she seems to be waking right back up. This is where Luna learns her heritage and just how to really kill an ancient Strigoi, an original vampire.

Bless Your Heart by Lindy Ryan is sort of like taking the quirkiness and eccentricities of a humorous cozy mystery and combining it with some light horror. Yes, there are murderous vampires on the loose but there’s also some laughs and certainly an interesting family at the center of the story. I did rate this first book at three and a half stars thinking there was a lot thrown into the mix for the first book and I felt I could’ve gotten to know the characters a bit better but I have a feeling that the series will only continue to grow on me as it continues on.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.