Title: The Final Girl Support Group
Author: Grady Hendrix
Pages: 352
Rating: 4
Published: July 1, 2021
Support groups are amazing resources, especially if you've experienced a very traumatic event in your life. You can find many different kinds of support groups depending on your needs - in this instance, if you are a Final Girl in a slasher movie, this is the group for you.
Lynette Tarkington survived a massacre 22 years prior and has been suffering ever since. Deep-rooted paranoia has left Lyn locked in her apartment unless she needs to go get supplies or go to group. She is constantly looking over her shoulder and will take over 3 hours to get somewhere because she keeps changing buses and making sure nobody is wearing the same shoes twice. "The line between being too careful and not being careful enough is a line you only get to cross once. (Grady, location 423).
The support group involves: the girl who survived a Texas Chainsaw Massacre situation, a woman who survived an attack at her summer camp, one whose brother escaped from a mental asylum on Halloween and came back to murder her, and finally one whose boyfriend was obsessed with the slasher movies and wanted to make his girlfriend into a Final Girl. All of these women had movies and franchises based on them, yet when all of the hubbub about them died down, they were left with nothing but their paranoia.
Once in group, it was announced that a book is being written and published about things that were only discussed in group, and now one of their own is dead. Her killer's brother came back and finished the job at the summer camp. Now Lyn puts it upon herself to figure out who is involved and orchestrating the attacks, and how to stop them.
Throughout the novel you are lead to believe that their therapist, Dr. Carol, is the culprit, but in a (in my opinion) not very original or exciting twist, you learn that it is not Dr. Carol, but someone whose life is a byproduct of the support group. This twist to me was lackluster and the ending was okay. It ends in a traditional slasher movie fashion with the Final Girls running for their lives in the summer camp with their new killer shooting at them.
What I did enjoy about this book was how insane Lyn became and even more paranoid about the whole situation about her life, and the new killer. She also went on a self-discovering journey that you can't live in constant fear for the rest of your life - how you need to go out and do things and live a life that doesn't involve 4 walls. "...no matter how hard we try, we can’t stop life. No matter how much we fight, no matter how many we kill, things keep changing, and growing, and living..." (Hendrix, location 4,601).
I do recommend reading this book, but I wish the killer was someone more exciting.
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