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A review by anishinaabekwereads
The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix
adventurous
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix reads very campy. Another homage to the slasher genre, this one leans VERY heavy into slasher fandom knowledge. In a lot of ways, I think Hendrix's attempt was more accessible to those of us not so well-versed in final girls and monsters. It's fast-paced, more up-front about what's happening. And it also reads less...well scary.
We follow Lynette, a final girl who doesn't view herself as a real final girl, who has spent decades traumatized despite her monthly final girl support group. When someone starts trying to take out her fellow final girls, she alone believes it's a sign of something much bigger than any one of them. Did I say final girl enough yet?
This wasn't the perfect book by any means. Points throughout felt very on-the-nose about gendered violence and yet still felt like they weren't actually saying anything substantive. Many characters felt underdeveloped but acted like they wanted to be fully developed (despite their differences I kept getting some of them mixed up until the last 50 pages). There were few twists and turns I didn't see coming. And any time a horror novel unabashedly and uncritically brings up Indian burial grounds, Indian "legends," or basically makes us dead for the sake of a couple throw-away scenes I'm usually out. Many reviewers have said this would be better as a movie and they're not wrong. But still, I found something incredibly compelling and exciting about this novel.
It was the kind of horror novel that felt like a good addition to a summer spent reading some really tense things. I think it's movie-like quality, its camp made it hard to put down.
We follow Lynette, a final girl who doesn't view herself as a real final girl, who has spent decades traumatized despite her monthly final girl support group. When someone starts trying to take out her fellow final girls, she alone believes it's a sign of something much bigger than any one of them. Did I say final girl enough yet?
This wasn't the perfect book by any means. Points throughout felt very on-the-nose about gendered violence and yet still felt like they weren't actually saying anything substantive. Many characters felt underdeveloped but acted like they wanted to be fully developed (despite their differences I kept getting some of them mixed up until the last 50 pages). There were few twists and turns I didn't see coming. And any time a horror novel unabashedly and uncritically brings up Indian burial grounds, Indian "legends," or basically makes us dead for the sake of a couple throw-away scenes I'm usually out. Many reviewers have said this would be better as a movie and they're not wrong. But still, I found something incredibly compelling and exciting about this novel.
It was the kind of horror novel that felt like a good addition to a summer spent reading some really tense things. I think it's movie-like quality, its camp made it hard to put down.