Reviews tagging 'Misogyny'

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

98 reviews

hauntedantiqueshop's review against another edition

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mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

I really am sick of being a hater but damn, it’s just SO easy. 

ALL of the characters are annoying and unlovable, their backstories are just copy and pasted classic slasher movies that were chopped and screwed the TINIEST bit. There’s no originality to them whatsoever, even down to their names. I get it’s supposed to be an homage but it feels more like borderline plagiarism or parody. Not to mention that some of the specific movies he picked to steal from are unrealistic in real life scenarios. There's like five bad guy fake outs, it’s overkill once you finally get the big (predictable and also just straight up taken from Scream 4 and 5) picture. There was a weird feminist take he was halfassed trying to make but it felt insincere and patronizing. Killing the only black character first (off screen!), having her buy her movie rights and not fix the whitewashing of her own trauma, and then having her be a hypeman hallucination for a white woman to survive, TO THEN let one of the masterminds behind her death into their support group is just in such bad taste. There really isn’t a redeeming quality of this book for me.


tldr: I’m revoking Grady Hendrix’s writing privileges. He’s going in the chokey.

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narbine's review

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dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

interesting premise. 

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mothmania's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0


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blueowl2ivy's review against another edition

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adventurous dark fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0


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sarah_mcmullan_nz's review against another edition

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dark slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.0

If you're not  a horror movie fan maybe, if you are NOPE

As someone who makes their living out of watching and writing about horror films, this book was incredibly frustrating to read. 
In all honesty, I think I enjoyed trying to figure out who the characters were supposed to be way more than reading this poorly written, sloppily plotted incredibly obvious story. 
Having said that - don't waste your time. 

There are far better horror books, books about final girls and final girl films out there. Find them. 


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rosesofthespring's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I wish it had wrapped up a few more plot threads, but overall an excellent novel. I'm not surprised that this one is so popular.

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rancarox's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

This book started out so strong, but the ending/reveal was disappointing (and honestly just kind of silly?) 

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theemptynotebooks's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25


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britkbrown's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5


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flufficorn's review

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dark tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? N/A
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

The first third of this book excited me, as I realized I had never read/listened to a book like this. But at some point near the half way mark, I found myself struggling to stay interested. I think it is because I eventually realized that there are a lot of reasons I lost interest in the Slasher sub-genre of films, and this story falls victim to those reasons and still expects me to think they are asking me to question the genre through their end-of-chapter quote blocks. That part of the story felt phoned-in. If the author really wanted the reader to question the concept the The Final Girl and the Slasher sub-genre, they would have had Lynette question herself and her actions more. Instead, Lynette found justification for all of her behavior. To that end, this book might have some kind of commentary about group therapy/trauma therapy, but it isn't a commentary that I picked up on. 

A lot of reviews mention that this story is very predictable. While I did not specifically predict any particular plot point, between my knowledge of Slasher genre tropes and the clue crumbs left by the author, nothing in the story was particularly shocking or unexpected. The characters felt flat and one-dimensional to me, but Lynette did some healing at the very end there. Femme characters written by cis-men always fall flat to me, and this story was no different in that department. 

This story positions itself as something questioning the inherent misogyny of the Slasher genre and our relationship to it as media consumers, but is really just a Slasher genre story that wants you to think it is smarter than it is. 

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