If you've followed my blog, you know I'm a fan of Grady Hendrix's writing. I reviewed The Southern Book Club Guide to Slaying Vampires: A Novel and My Best Friends Exorcism (now a movie, that I heard was terrible, but I'll probably watch it anyway), now it's time to review The Final Girl Support Group: A Novel. Of the three novels, I liked this one the best!
***SPOILER WARNING...SORT OF***
The book tells the story of six "final girls", or women who live to tell the tale of confronting their slasher, that meet once a month in a support group. They've been together longer than ten years and each one has a different traumatizing experience. If you know horror movies, you'll relate their killers to 1970s and 1980s classic horror movies that we all know and love. The support group meets with a therapist, and in turn the therapist has used their sessions to author best-selling books. They each have processed their past differently, from one lady that has moved on and feels they are living in the past, to one that feels like the group is her only connection to people and the outside world. In any case, the final girls have a bond that no one else does, and without them realizing it, they have become a family.
I've said this before, and I'll say it again. I'm impressed at how Hendrix writes female characters. Their personalities greatly vary, but their interactions are wholly realistic and relatable.
The book is told from the voice of one of the final girls, Lynette. We see her living as a victim, paranoid and scared. One day, a member of the support group doesn't show up because she's been murdered. Now Lynette needs to find out who the killer is, and so does the reader! In gathering information, you peel away Lynette's story, and watch it slowly unravel. The heroines are flawed survivors, which makes the reader sympathetic to their experiences and eager to find out more.
I won't tell you who did it, but it's a surprise, and just when you think you know, you don't! It's a thriller and as a reader you will feel like you have inside knowledge of a horror and gore slasher movie. Again, this book is also a reflection of society's obsession with serial killers and slasher movies and how much some people idolize them. That's a whole different kind of horror.
While I've never thought of myself as a “final girl”, there are days when I feel like it's me alone against the world, and I'm ready to do battle! The ladies in this book have a fighting spirit that makes them go on fighting when others would give up. They inspire me not to give up. They have battled, and won more than once. This book wraps up nicely, and I wanted to read it before next week, when Hendrix's next book How to Sell a Haunted House is released.
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