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A review by livelyghost
The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix
challenging
dark
emotional
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
I would like to preface this by saying that I don’t normally read/watch horrors so I don’t have a lot of experience with the genre. Aka if you’re looking for a review from a professional, this ain’t it.
The Final Girl Support Group starts at the meeting of a therapy group made up of the women who were the sole survivors of brutal killings. One says that she’s quitting, throwing our main character Lynette into a tailspin in her meticulously planned life. She starts as what feels like an unreliable narrator - she’s paranoid, thinks someone is coming to kill her at any time, and reacts in extremes - but you slowly start to feel your reality shift into hers.
This book gets dark quickly, but honestly the most fraught scenes for me were with the cops. Hearing Lynette’s history with them and the way that they engage with her through the story is chilling no matter how you feel about police.
I’m not sure if the Final Girls were all characters from actual movies made or just inspired by them - the book does a great job of blurring the lines between fiction and reality - but seeing their vastly different coping mechanisms was wonderful. I could have spent an entire book with Chrissy and her dark philosophy. I really enjoyed the horror nods in the chapter titles and fake newspaper clippings sprinkled between.
The Final Girl Support Group was a harder read for me. Unfamiliarity with the genre combined with a deep dark plot made it difficult to jump back in, but the last third of the book picks up speed and just doesn’t stop. I’d catch myself skipping to the end of the page and have to force myself to go back and read every word. It gets a little too twisty occasionally but left me satisfied overall.
The Final Girl Support Group starts at the meeting of a therapy group made up of the women who were the sole survivors of brutal killings. One says that she’s quitting, throwing our main character Lynette into a tailspin in her meticulously planned life. She starts as what feels like an unreliable narrator - she’s paranoid, thinks someone is coming to kill her at any time, and reacts in extremes - but you slowly start to feel your reality shift into hers.
This book gets dark quickly, but honestly the most fraught scenes for me were with the cops. Hearing Lynette’s history with them and the way that they engage with her through the story is chilling no matter how you feel about police.
I’m not sure if the Final Girls were all characters from actual movies made or just inspired by them - the book does a great job of blurring the lines between fiction and reality - but seeing their vastly different coping mechanisms was wonderful. I could have spent an entire book with Chrissy and her dark philosophy. I really enjoyed the horror nods in the chapter titles and fake newspaper clippings sprinkled between.
The Final Girl Support Group was a harder read for me. Unfamiliarity with the genre combined with a deep dark plot made it difficult to jump back in, but the last third of the book picks up speed and just doesn’t stop. I’d catch myself skipping to the end of the page and have to force myself to go back and read every word. It gets a little too twisty occasionally but left me satisfied overall.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Mass/school shootings, Mental illness, Injury/Injury detail, Gun violence, Sexual assault, Death, and Gore