THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP BY GRADY HENDRIX

7/13/2021

The Final Girls Support Group is a bingeable read but the horror aspects don’t translate to the pages like I hoped. When a book is marketed towards the horror genre it should read like one. This one doesn’t. It’s more of an action book with a little suspense than horror.

Rating: ★★★
Release Date: July 13, 2021
Genre: Horror. Action. Suspense.
Series: None. Complete Standalone.
Pages: 352 pages
Format: eBook Source: Publisher

In horror movies, the final girls are the ones left standing when the credits roll. They made it through the worst night of their lives…but what happens after?

Like his bestselling novel The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, Grady Hendrix’s latest is a fast-paced, frightening, and wickedly humorous thriller. From chain saws to summer camp slayers, The Final Girl Support Group pays tribute to and slyly subverts our most popular horror films—movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Scream.

Lynette Tarkington is a real-life final girl who survived a massacre. For more than a decade, she’s been meeting with five other final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived

the unthinkable, working to put their lives back together. Then one woman misses a meeting, and their worst fears are realized—someone knows about the group and is determined to rip their lives apart again, piece by piece.

But the thing about final girls is that no matter how bad the odds, how dark the night, how sharp the knife, they will never, ever give up.

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𝗥𝗘𝗩𝗜𝗘𝗪 𝗦𝗡𝗔𝗣𝗦𝗛𝗢𝗧: The Final Girls Support Group is a bingeable read but the horror aspects don’t translate to the pages like I hoped. When a book is marketed towards the horror genre it should read like one. This one doesn’t. It’s more of an action book with a little suspense than horror.

I’ve read a few of the authors novels in the past and while I can certainly see the appeal to readers his books simply don’t stand out to me. For some reason I expect more from his stories than he delivers. This is probably due to the fact that other readers rave about him so much which is fine, but I can’t seem to see what they do. I suppose that in order for me to express my thoughts in a way that makes sense that I should tell you what I didn’t like. Here goes…

This book deals with the lone victims (the “final girls”) who survive acts of violence (mostly from serial killers). These are the girls we all see in horror movies who are the only ones to get out of the grips of a killer who annihilated all their friends. The premise sounds intriguing right? Unfortunately, the violence that these girls endured is a little too close to the popular horror movies of the 80’s and 90’s (which stand to be some of my favorite movies of all time). Eerily close actually. It’s like the author USED those movies and just changed the titles so that they fit into his story without infringing upon copyrights or something. It was a bit weird to read to be honest and an author who is going to write a book like this should have used a little more originality.

Another thing I didn’t like about this book is how LITTLE the author describes what actually happened to these girls. I think it would have benefitted the story and made me like the characters more if he’d used their backstories in a bigger way. It’s like he skirts around them and gives as little detail as necessary.

Finally, these characters are extremely dry. I honestly didn’t like any of them especially the main character whose POV is used throughout the story. I didn’t feel bad for her, I found her to be off-putting, and her clear mental issues could have been better focused on for more likability.

All that being said, this isn’t a terrible book, and I did read it quite fast because I wanted to see what happened. However, it wasn’t a book I’d favorite or even recommend to everyone who enjoys reading.

𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗙𝗘𝗖𝗧 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗙𝗔𝗡𝗦 𝗢𝗙:
• Old school horror movies
• Action packed novels with a bit of violence and gore
• Authors like Riley Sager, Stephen Graham Jones, Chuck Wendig

𝗠𝗬 𝗥𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚: ⭐⭐⭐