Final Girl Support Group
Never let your guard down
Author: Grady Hendrix
Year first published: 2022
Original Language: English
Genre: Horror
With it being october, I wanted to read horror for the spooky season (but ended up getting side tracked and took a while to get to this book).
You know how in horror movies, specifically slasher movies, there’s always the trope of there being one last victim who escapes it all, the Final Girl? This book is about them. Set in a world where such hits as Scream, Nightmare on Elm Street, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and many others actually happened, there exists a support group for final girls from some of the most iconic 80’s and 90’s slashers, which in world were real mass murder events.
Our protagonist is one of these girls. Over alert, nervous, and more paranoid than a tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist, Lynette has never recovered from her ordeal. While she was attacked as a teen, as a now late 30s year old woman, she still is on constant watch, making sure to be thorough and meticulous about her safety, taking hours long roundabouts and detours trough the public transport system, even paying for a movie ticket only to leave through the theater’s fire exits, she goes to great lengths to make sure no one is stalking her and her home location is kept safe and secret. No one can know where she lives.
Trust no one, and no one can hurt you. That sort of thing.
Of course, if she stayed perfectly safe we wouldn’t have a story, would we? So of course, she gets found, and the resulting whirlwind tears through her life and everything she’s done to keep herself safe. And worse, she’s not the only one on the chopping block.
This is my first book from this author and I like their style. I find first person perspective to be pretty hit or miss, and it can limit the world building to one single character’s views, with all its flaws and can leave the reader with lots of questions, which is not a bad thing for a horror or mystery novel unless when the author does things such as never describe what almost any of the characters look like. I gueds in this case it could be because Lynette doesn’t…really see other people. She sees threats and what they’re wearing, . This book kinda skirts the line between the too. I didn’t find it particularly scary or anything, it really was more of a mystery wearing a thriller’s clothing.
The story’s got pretty good pacing, and reveals were pretty well timed. Information isn’t just shoved at you, its trickled bit by bit, which helps with making the reader feel Lynne’s paranoia and discomfort. And because she doesn’t know how to trust people she doesn’t always make her plans and intentions super clear.
In between chapters are little news snippets and movie reviews for the movie franchises made of these murders after the fact. They’re fun little extras that help you understand the characters better, but they aren’t essential to the story.
The main cast is alright, they’ve all got their own quirks, Dani was probably my favorite. I just found her the most interesting. I personally thought Heather was kind of insufferable, trying to hard to be the sarcastic tough girl but really just comes off as antagonistic for no actual reason. Garret is also a huge piece of trash. He massively took advantage of Lynne sexually and financially, and pretty much groomed her, while being as old as her dad and also married with his own family. Blech.
The arc with Stephanie was a roller coaster ride. Holy bananas. Skye’s mommy issues were not really that surprising and reflects a real world issue of targetted violence towards women, which this whole book is basically about. I’m sure several people predicted he would go that direction. I figured there was something messed up going on in the Eliot household, especially with an eight year old child trying to stab a house guest with a pencil. The fact that Pax’s comic nearly clear as day spelled out TRAUMA in big bold letters, really shows that for all her credentials as a therapist, Carol isn’t really paying much attention to her children at all. Which from everything I’ve heard about professional psychiatrists (especiall the ones that specialize in families, for that delicious irony), that kinda tracks.
The one thing that bothered me though was Crissy’s museum. There was so much detail and depth put into describing all of the displays (especially with Marilyn’s ball gown), and yet Heather’s display…we get nothing? We’re just told that whatever it was, Dream King himself built it, and apparently is so horrific that Lynne says she could never blame Heather for betraying them, none of them would after seein this, but they never even hint at what it is. No description, barely a word about it. I get that maybe he didn’t want to toss in magic into a very grounded in reality story, but he kinda already lost that leg to stand on the moment he added a supernatural killer to the story (though to the book’s credit, the “reviews” about Heather’s movie franchise complain that it was just a pedo attacking a few people, as well as a bunch of unrelated suicides, which is kinda what NMOES looks like when you get rid of the supernatural aspect).
Oh, and the jail scene with Lynne, the way the cops behaved was just…goddamn are correctional officers allowed to just be that needlessly cruel (pasting “evidence” letters on her cell to torture her)? I guess its really a case of who’s gonna stop them, but that was a brutal scene.
I enjoyed this one though, and might check out Hendrix’s other works in the future.
Review posted 2023/10/23