‘The Final Girl Support Group’ – Grady Hendrix (Titan Books)

 

Page Count: 393 Pages

Now here is a book that I originally bought back in October 2022 (thanks for the reminder Amazon) with every aim of reading and… Didn’t. Don’t judge me. I am at the mercy of my reading whims, always have been and always will be. Anyway, I ended up giving that copy to my eldest daughter and she really enjoyed it. All’s well that ends well ;o)

Fast forward to about a week ago, I was in the office and that days ‘commute read’ wasn’t working’ at all; I needed something to get me home and there’s a Waterstones just round the corner from the office so… In I went :o) You can see where this is going, can’t you? Almost four years after I let my original copy of ‘The Final Girl Support Group’ fly the nest, I found myself with another copy and a bus ride home to crack it open.

It took me a little while to get into it but this weekend, just gone, ended up being the best time to sit down and polish off ‘The Final Girl Support Group’. Let me tell you about it :o)

In horror movies, the final girl is the one who’s left standing when the credits roll. The one who fought back, defeated the killer, and avenged her friends. The one who emerges bloodied but victorious. But after the sirens fade and the audience moves on, what happens to her?

Lynnette Tarkington survived a massacre twenty-two years ago, and it has defined every day of her life since. And she’s not alone. 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, putting their lives back together, piece by piece. That is until one of the women misses a meeting and Lynnette’s worst fears are realized―someone knows about the group and is determined to take their lives apart again, piece by piece.

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

There is a lot going on ‘The Final Girl Support Group’ and I’ll be honest, not all of it hit the mark for me. I wouldn’t say that was the books fault though, it’s written for a very specific audience (literally the whole point of the book) and while it does an amazing job, I don’t quite fit into the audience that it’s talking to. Story of my life really, anyway…

There is a lot going on here and I’m not (too) embarrassed to say that as a casual fan of ‘slasher’ movies, a lot of it went over my head. And that’s cool, there was still a lot for me to sink my teeth into but it was very much a book for fans with a lot more commitment, to the genre, than I have. If I hadn’t read the ‘Praise for The Final Girl Support Group’ after finishing the book, I’d never have realised that at least one of the characters was named after an actual ‘Final Girl’ from a Friday the 13th instalment.

There was a lot that I didn’t get then and that’s very much on me. What I did find though was that Hendrix’s search for humanity in the killers, took away the sense of ‘supernatural menace’ that I particularly enjoy when I’m watching a ‘slasher’ (mostly the sequels, that’s where you’ll find it). The likes of Jason Voorhees are implacable enough when they’re alive, watching them come back from the grave adds extra chills for me, no matter how bad a sequel might be ;o) Losing that pushed ‘The Final Girl Support Group’ a little too close to regular ‘murder mystery’ than I’d normally go for. Again though, your mileage will inevitably vary.

I stuck with the book though and overall, had one hell of a time reading it; I didn’t really have any choice in the matter. No matter what your definition of ‘horror’, the fact is that Grady Hendrix has written a compelling mystery that has a great deal to say about the ‘slasher’ genre. Come for the mystery, stay for the commentary; it’s all good ;o) Hendrix frames his narrative with a great concept and uses it to really look deeply into just what it means to be the Final Girl, still standing at the end of a murder spree. More interesting though is watching Hendrix spin things a little more and ask the question, what is it like to be the Final Girl when you’ve done nothing to earn that title? Without giving too much away, Lynnette carries a lot of guilt and this adds extra emphasis to what must be one of the most fucked up, yet strangely satisfying, ‘redemption’ arcs that I’ve seen a character go through.

‘The Final Girl Support Group’ may not have quite done it for me but I still can’t let that take away from just how much Grady Hendrix has poured into this book and what we get as the end result; a book that has a hell of a lot to say and still finds the time to deliver a vicious plot that kept me guessing right until the end.

I’m really glad I finally made the time for ‘The Final Girl Support Group’. Honestly, if you’re pondering a read yourself then don’t do what I did and hang about for a few years, give it a go now. I don’t think you’ll regret it.