The Final Girl Support Group

wow. this book is Not Good. the only thing i can appreciate here is this attempted messaging, because i think if well executed, this book could have been a really good commentary on the way violence against women has become commoditized. however, this book was not well executed. for one thing, this book did to it's own characters the very thing it's trying to critique. i know nothing about any of these women, main character included, besides the bare bones of the details of their own horror story and one other character trait that's harped on relentlessly. one could argue for the flatness of the main character makes sense because the rest of her personality has been stripped in response to her trauma, but that 1. still makes her uninteresting to follow and 2. is not written in a way that makes that feels intentional. this book also felt more like a thriller than a horror, which is fine i guess but not what i was signing up for. this book also felt severely underwritten. there's something to be said for not being gratuitous with the character's backstories, but because their personal horrors were the only things i knew about the characters, the lack of almost any detail left me with nothing to grasp onto or any way to distinguish the characters from each other. there was also a few things (in regards to heather's character, if you know you know) that i literally have no idea what those scenes could have been even hinting at or what significance they were supposed to have because absolutely nothing was said about them. (does this mean a sequel? god, please no.) we literally never even heard chrissy's backstory. who was keith???? i guess it's not important? the writing was also not engaging in any way and the only thing i even mildly enjoyed were the sparse mixed media elements, however all the references to these fake franchises that were such obvious references to real life horror franchises was very confusing for me to keep up with and remember which girl belonged to which fake franchise, and then to remember which real franchise they belonged to. (ALSO BY THE END YOU REALIZE THIS ENTIRE FUCKING BOOK IS A SCREAM 4 RIP OFF?????) i could honestly go on even more but yeah, one star, don't recommend.