Reviews

This was a book I was very excited to read. As soon as I saw the cover and title displayed at Barnes & Noble, I was sold. Unfortunately, this book ended up feeling like a waste of time and a waste of a good idea.

The premise is based around a world in which the classic horror movie trope of the Final Girl exists in the real world, and the story is supposed to show how they cope with what happened to them and how their lives are impacted (and then of course how they act in the face of new danger). I had expected that these Final Girls would have survived tragedies that occur more commonly in the real world. But instead, each girl's backstory is the story of a classic 80s or 90s horror movie. That's the first place this story goes wrong. If each character's backstory is a different horror movie, the author isn't just bringing the Final Girl trope into the real world, but every other slasher trope along with it. To illustrate: Imagine you are watching an 80s slasher, and there is one virgin/good girl character. If someone watching with you says, "Oh the virgin character is definitely going to survive and that jock is for sure going to die," most of us would say yeah obviously (think the slasher movie rules laid out in Scream). Conversely, if the news came on and there was a multi homicide reported, and your friend says, "Oh I'm sure there was one highschool-aged virgin girl who survived. That always happens," that would sound extremely stupid and nonsensical. This is what reading this entire book felt like.

The book runs with this idea that all these tropes exist in the real world without doing anything to make it more believable. All their killers moved slowly, they all had unconventional weapons, all the attacks happened when the girls were in highschool, Final Girls lost popularity after the early 90s, etc. It comes across as very juvenile and feels jarring with the "real world" setting. I also think it was lazy writing to copy the backstories from famous horror movies. If there had been references to horror movies that weren't overtly obvious and included more than just the most common horror movies you could think of, that would have been fun. Instead though, the author spends time rehashing the plot of Friday the 13th, Scream, and Halloween to us.

Moving past the world setting, which never feels right, the story itself is honestly pretty boring for the most part. It takes quite a long time to get going, and there are really random boring filler scenes added in throughout. None of the characters are particularly likeable, and the mystery isn't very gripping. There are also a lot of plot points that just get dropped and are left unresolved ( After the big battle scene weren't the cops still after Lynette for multiple reasons?, Didn’t she leave her ID at a murder scene?, What ever happened as a result of this super dramatic book that was leaked?, what was the point of anything related to Chrissy?...)

I've also seen multiple reviews commend Grady Hendrix for his feminist messaging because he addresses that a lot of media people readily consume displays violence against women. Not to put him on blast, but just like this story being lazy, his messaging is lazy as well. I can't imagine that this is a new revelation to anyone, and he brought absolutely nothing new to the conversation on the topic.

This gets 1.75 stars from me because it wasn't particularly hard to get through, I've read worse books, and I did enjoy the throughline of the main character's "pet" plant.