A review by lighterthaneyre
The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

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

3.75

Pros:
  • Extremely good example of an unreliable narrator. And getting the slow reveal of just how unreliable she is via everyone's interactions and dialogue with her, so good
  • There's a lot of slasher-movie style action scenes, and they were good to read. Fast paced, frantic energy, clear where they should be, tense. 
  • I am regularly shocked at how well this author does writing female protagonists. The women all feel different, deep, informed by their (in this case slasher-traumatic) backstories. The book does a weird thing where it shows men in a disgusting light at all times, which is not normal for the author. But honestly I think that's the POV character. And we already know her perception of things is messed up. It was jarring until I resolved that as a reader, but I think it scans.
  • There's something about the "support group" angle that felt genuine. Seeing the different women, who have healed at different rates and in different directions, effected by but not defined by the trauma. I don't know but it just really worked for me.

Cons:
  • I spoiled a twist for myself. Which made some of the foreshadowing much more obvious because duh, I knew it was coming. Hate when I do that to myself.
  • In the setting of the world, the slasher movies exist the way they do in the real world - summer, popcorn thrillers, considered not terribly deep by most but beloved by some true blue horror fans. But then at the same time, they're based on actual mass murder events. The tension there feels. Wrong. The author does play with that a little - how heartless a press circuit can be for victims, stalkers becoming an extension of the original crisis, but it still feels weird. Between chapters there's snippets from in universe articles or interviews, and a lot of it (very heavy handedly) explores why women being murdered is such fun entertainment that we don't examine closely. And on the one hand, sure, I am down for some gender studies style gazing into a mirror at Society TM. But at the same time - we don't have fun summer movies about Columbine. We might have a tense drama, or an emotional drama about a shooter's backstory, but that's fundamentally a different category to the Freddy Krueger cinema universe. When it's "based on a true story", I think audiences expect a certain level of preformed gravitas, and when it's a slasher audiences expect a certain level of preformed camp. That might just be a personal opinion, but that tension really took the winds out of the sails of the themes the book was going for.
  • This books themes are not sub text. It's text. It's a lecture in some places.

I really enjoyed this book. Maybe not my favorite from Hendrix, but I'm glad I picked it up from the library.
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