The Final Girl Support Group

Grady Hendrix's is the next Stephen King.

His prose is clean and serviceable, nothing fancy, nothing deep, and his worldbuilding falls apart if you stare at it a little too hard, but jesus fucking christ can this man write a page-turner. His books are absurdly well paced, his plotting is tight and immaculate and his character arcs are phenomenal.

It's so hard for me to start one of his books and not immediately devour the entire thing (I'm already halfway through We Sold Our Souls just 2 days after finishing this...).

He's not high literature, but he's top tier entertainment. I hope he continues at this pace for the next 40 years.

3.75* rounded up. This is not so much a random number. The book was more enjoyable and enthralling than a 3.5* read, but also, I think, not quite as polished as I'd expect a 4* read to be.

An homage to slasher films with some fairly sensitive social commentary on the side, this book was a fun and engaging ride that keot me guessing till the end. It wasn't so much horror though, probably more like a chick lit-style thriller. Don't get me wrong, there were graphic bits but compared to some of the truly triggering books I've read in recent times, this book was fairly tame in that department.

The Final Girl Support Group is a therapy circle for Final Girls: the one girl left standing at the end of a massacre by a deranged mass murderer and who often is the one who kills him in order to save herself. Lynnette Tarkington is one of the six Final Girls in this group. She has lived the past 16 years of her life in paranoia, afraid that history is going to repeat itself or that old ghosts from her past are going to revisit her. Then, it feels like someone is plucking off each of the six Final Girls one by one, and wants them all dead.

Lynnette is not an endearing narrator, and shows very early on that she's not a reliable one either. I felt sorry for her but I never liked her, and her perspective sure as hell kept me guessing. In that sense, Hendrix wrote her masterfully, casually playing with the reader's trust in a first person narrator, pushing and pulling us by turns to and away from Lynnette. I just wish that more was said about the mental health conditions that Lynnette clearly has. The ending of the book wasn't rushed in its plot but it certainly gave an unsatisfactory conclusion to how Lynnette managed to improve her mental health, like "getting shot at in the head" was all she needed to get at least significantly better.

Of all the other characters, my heart went out the most to Dani and Michelle. We are introduced to Dani's story in the first half of the book, how she became a Final Girl, and of all their stories, hers hit me the hardest for some reason. Similarly, of all the graphic deaths in this book, it was Michelle's quiet, long-drawn death that really punched me in the feels. Having Lynnette and co. just casually leave her body in the park and have some random old man to look after her without realising she was dead, after which he "tried to kiss her" - that was actually the hardest bit for me to read, far more so than all the massacres. I particularly liked the reflection about why pop culture and people in general are obsessed and fascinated with the fast, messy deaths but can't seem to stomach the slow, drawn-out fade.

The plot twists in this one weren't omg mind blowing but it certainly did bring me on a ride and a wild goose chase, so I'll give it that. I enjoyed the action overall, although some parts (thankfully few) felt a little unnecessarily detailed and long. Then again, I'm not one for reading overwrought action sequences so perhaps I'm not the target demographic here.

For a fairly light read, this was pretty enjoyable and fun. I'd recommend it for anyone who enjoys slasher films or who simply just want a good action-y thriller/mystery revolving around a somewhat interesting premise of Final Girls.

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix is a mixed bag that's at times fun, confusing, and frustrating. In this book Lynette is a member of a support group for final girls, or the sole survivors of a murder event. Someone starts killing/setting up the members of this group. Lynette tries to figure out who and why. I should probably begin by disclaiming that I'm not very well versed in the slasher films and books this novel is based on. I'm also not well versed in therapy. So there's probably a lot that I simply didn't get, and that deficiency is with me, not with Hendrix. With that said, I found the plot confusing. I didn't care for how Hendrix revealed information in the book (waiting until much too late to reveal critical info about the protagonist's backstory). I thought the book was a bit slow to start and found pretty much every character unlikable (although I came to like Lynette more as the book went on). Unlike all of Hendrix's other books (at least the ones readily available) there is no supernatural element in this one, and I definitely missed it. There were some exciting scenes in the book, but overall this one didn't hook me the way some of Hendrix's other books have. If I was ranking Hendrix books I'd rank them 1. Horrorstor/My Best Friend's Exorcism, 3. SBC Guide to Slaying Vampires, 4. We Sold Our Souls, and then finally 5. The Final Girls Support Group. I'm disappointed to have not enjoyed this book more. Maybe if I watch a bunch of slasher films and read it again I'd have a different opinion. But for now ⭐️⭐️⭐️

In thinking of the title of this book, The Final Girl Support Group, where a support group is by its nature a safe and comforting idea, instead, think about what it means to have been a final girl. The horror of it all. 

Although the horror films of the 70s and 80s would have us believe that the last girls survive their ordeals unscarred, we know too often from life that survivors are bent if not broken.  The Final Girl Support Group invites us to see what these heroines might endure as they struggle to unbend themselves decades after their trauma. 

Those who are horror fans or grew up in the 70s and 80s are familiar with the final girl trope. The idea of a final girl has evolved as horror movies and audiences evolved. To understand and appreciate The Final Girl Support Group it helps to have a passing understanding of the final girl trope. The final girl was usually depicted as an innocent, virginal girl who stayed away from vices such as drinking and drugs. And is thus rewarded for her “good deads” with living through the horror. The narrative structure of the movie or book followed her vantage point, and we as an audience are engaged in her struggles and have a vested interest in her fight to survive. We want her to win, either by escape or rescue. 

“We get subjected to sequels. That's what makes our guys different, that's what makes them monsters - they keep coming back.”

 As the trope aged, the idea of what a final girl changed as well. Instead of being saved, they often save themselves. Either by being cunning and running. We began to expect more from our final girls. And, as an audience, we revisit the final girl multiple times. Over and over, they are thrust into chaos. Nancy Thompson of Nightmare on Elm Street suffered through three versions of battle with Freddy, starting at age 15 and ending at age 21. Had she survived the last movie, what would her mind be after facing the dream king three times? 

I would think that Hendrix created The Final Girl Support Group as a way to exercise the idea that the girl is a person and surviving is only the first part of her struggle. Watching these bloodfests at a midnight show is all about the spectacle of gore. But, with a spectacle comes a certain amount of distancing from the characters as people. They are basically the objective focus  of the protagonist's determination.

“Sometimes you need the money more than you need to live with yourself”

The story starts with a group of middle-aged women sniping at each other. They are not friends, but people with shared experiences. They have known each other a long time and have seen each other through the enduring PTSD that comes from the horrors they have endured. In some ways, they are closer than family. What I immediately liked about the story was the idea that these women, no longer final girls, have reacted to their traumas differently. Although I am no expert in psychology, the reactions these women have to horrors like this have a certain authenticness. 

For example, one is a drug addict, one is consumed with wealth and power, one is a shut-in driven by the protection of herself and trust of no one, and one channeled their pain into an organization to help others. These reactions seem like plausable reactions that one could have to PTSD like this. The story is from the vantage point of one of the final girls, Lynnette Tarkington, who survived the grizzly murders of her family around Christmas. She was impaled on an antler and set to watch the destruction of all she loved. Now she exists like a ghost, consumed with the idea that something horrible could happen because it already had, twice. 

Seemingly out of nowhere, the final girl support group is targeted. Someone wants them to suffer, to be humiliated, and die as they should have originally. Lynette, who is not wholly stable and lives a life of quiet desperation, begins to understand that they are being chosen one by one to die.  But trying to get people to believe her is something else entirely. There are conspiracies inside conspiracies and so much violence. Lynette is a survivor, although she doesn't believe it. But will she survive all of this and save the people around her? That is the big “ask” of the story. Is Lynette strong enough? 

The Final Girl Support Group is a mover of a story once you get past Hendrix setting the scene in the very beginning. As a lover of slasher movies from the 80s, I never thought about the characters as actual people until reading this book. They were just nameless gore and splashes of crimson across the page and screen. But now, Hendrix has me thinking more in-depth about these characters. It has added a new depth of experience to the slasher movies I watched and books I read as a kid. And in some ways, I respect the distance that those cheesy slasher movies achieved. You can enjoy the movie with jump scares, Karo Corn Syrup dyed blood red, and a rubber knife and know that that kind of thing only happens in the movies. When you drop the partition between life and art, the experience of those movies has an entirely different feel to them. 

I believe that anyone who is a fan of horror novels and is familiar with the trope will love it.  But more so, I think that if you are a fan of the horror genre in general including movies, this story will resonate with you because it straddles a very uncomfortable blood-splattered line bisecting the two mediums. A line that I had not seen explored before. Check it out. 

Lynette is part of a special group of women, but it's not a club you'd want to join. The Final Girls Support Group has been meeting for years after all its members have survived the nigh-unstoppable, knife- and machete- and whatever-else-wielding monsters of legend. But public interest has dwindled, movie franchises have moved on, and the rest of the group is considering the same. After all, why keep living in the past? Lynette doesn't support this decision, and when other Final Girls start dying, it's up to her to figure out who's hunting them and keep the rest of the group safe. Of course, Lynette has secrets of her own, and they might be her downfall.

A good old-fashioned slasher with plenty of references to classics of the film genre. A quick read with enough emotional hook to keep the reader invested and, like every good slasher story, plenty of moments where you'll yell “Don't go in there!” to the page. 3 stab wounds out of 5.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Grady Hendrix clearly loves a horror flick (the names of the characters here, let alone their backgrounds, ought to be enough to tell you that), and this is simultaneously an ode to and interrogation of the slasher movie. It asks what happens after the credits roll, and what's it like inside the head of the lone survivor, dealing with that unbelievable trauma, as well as considering the misogyny and violence against women that is the engine driving these movies we all thrill to. But it's not some po-faced treatise, as all these musings are wrapped up in a fast moving plot that takes in enough action, gore and thrills to satisfy any fan of Halloween or Friday 13th. It's an homage to the slasher movie that celebrate its heights while not excusing its lows, and open-minded fans of the genre are going to get a lot out of it.