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A review by trevert
The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix
1.0
OK, I am normally a huge Grady Hendrix fan. I've loved all his other books. I've been looking forward to this all year, to be my "October horror novel" reading. And... It was awful. Every writer is going to produce a dud once in a while, but this was a painful thing to slog through, not at all helped by the audiobook reader's constant tone of mild condescension.
I mean, I got the cute references - Heather being Heather Langenkamp from the Freddy movies, Jamie being stalked on Halloween by her brother Nick, etc, but it was all so disjointed. It was like it couldn't decide whether to be a tongue-in-cheek in-joke about slasher movies or a critical re-examination of the real life trauma they'd cause, and it never made a choice, it just lurched drunkenly between concepts.
I kept hanging in there because I didn't enjoy the first half of Best Friend's Exorcism either and I kept hoping for a big turn-around where the book would suddenly get awesome, but it never came and I was basically just gritting my teeth and waiting for it to end.
It didn't help that all the characters were so unlikable. Narrator kept saying, "Final girls stick together" but never showing this, because they spent the whole book arguing, sniping, and backstabbing each other and making the situation worse every time, in every way possible. The endless red herrings didn't help either - HOW many times did we get, "Oh, THIS person is the killer, definitely, all the evidence points directly to them!"
And then there was the main woman's utter ineffectiveness. I went in expecting a Halloween-2018 Laurie Strode and holy shit, we're told over and over about all her fight training and her weapons training and her 57 different escape plans, and then she continually gets outsmarted and beaten up every fucking time, and usually it's because of something boneheadedly stupid she does. "I am a Final Girl and I plan for EVERYTHING." "Oh, I need to go to this mystery house deep in the woods miles from help. I will go alone, in the night, and take no weapons or backup. It'll be fine."
The final message of the book, that men should be punished for every wrong they do but women are, at absolute worst, merely misled by evil men and lack any agency or responsibility for their own actions, was just... holy shit. I lost track of how many times "evil men" got kicked in the balls throughout the book, and I *think* there was some attempt to seriously tackle misogyny in slasher films but it all came off like the misandrist rant of a guy trying to impress his 3rd wave Tumblr feminist girlfriend. Yikes.
I mean, I got the cute references - Heather being Heather Langenkamp from the Freddy movies, Jamie being stalked on Halloween by her brother Nick, etc, but it was all so disjointed. It was like it couldn't decide whether to be a tongue-in-cheek in-joke about slasher movies or a critical re-examination of the real life trauma they'd cause, and it never made a choice, it just lurched drunkenly between concepts.
I kept hanging in there because I didn't enjoy the first half of Best Friend's Exorcism either and I kept hoping for a big turn-around where the book would suddenly get awesome, but it never came and I was basically just gritting my teeth and waiting for it to end.
It didn't help that all the characters were so unlikable. Narrator kept saying, "Final girls stick together" but never showing this, because they spent the whole book arguing, sniping, and backstabbing each other and making the situation worse every time, in every way possible. The endless red herrings didn't help either - HOW many times did we get, "Oh, THIS person is the killer, definitely, all the evidence points directly to them!"
And then there was the main woman's utter ineffectiveness. I went in expecting a Halloween-2018 Laurie Strode and holy shit, we're told over and over about all her fight training and her weapons training and her 57 different escape plans, and then she continually gets outsmarted and beaten up every fucking time, and usually it's because of something boneheadedly stupid she does. "I am a Final Girl and I plan for EVERYTHING." "Oh, I need to go to this mystery house deep in the woods miles from help. I will go alone, in the night, and take no weapons or backup. It'll be fine."
The final message of the book, that men should be punished for every wrong they do but women are, at absolute worst, merely misled by evil men and lack any agency or responsibility for their own actions, was just... holy shit. I lost track of how many times "evil men" got kicked in the balls throughout the book, and I *think* there was some attempt to seriously tackle misogyny in slasher films but it all came off like the misandrist rant of a guy trying to impress his 3rd wave Tumblr feminist girlfriend. Yikes.