The Final Girl Support Group

Grady Hendrix — 2022

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER VOTED GOODREADS CHOICE AWARD BEST HORROR NOVEL OF 2021 A Good Morning America Buzz Pick "The horror master...puts his unique spin on slasher movie tropes."-USA Today A can't-miss summer read, selected by The New York Times, Oprah Daily, Time, USA Today, The Philadelphia Inquirer, CNN, LitHub, BookRiot, Bustle, Popsugar and the New York Public Library 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. Lynnette 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.

Reviews

lami@lamilovesbooks

Sep 10, 2024

Despite myself, I did really enjoy reading this

Cole Stoots@cstoots

Oct 30, 2023

The Final Girl Support Group is an amazing piece of horror fiction. Hendrix does a fantastic job of capturing the fast paced, nail biting tension of the slasher fics the novel is based on and expertly pairs it with excellent writing and themes of feminine power, mental health, and personal growth. The Final Girl Support Group is a book I’d recommend to anyone that loves horror movies and books that are hard to put down once you pick them up.

Alli@maybeitsalli

Oct 26, 2023

Hendrix is great at writing faced paced horror novels with a sense of humor.

Kaitlyn R@kaitlynryan

May 28, 2023

The concept of this book is so cool! I love the thought that was put into it and figuring out which final girl was related to what movie. I have never thought that horror would be a genre I’m interested in but Grady Hendrix is making me think twice.

Riley@coldeurydice

Feb 5, 2023

The story was engaging and there were solid plot points and twists. The meta/social commentary didn't land with me personally; it felt preachy about desensitised viewers of horror cinema when that is clearly the target demographic of the book. Maybe I just don't like that it succeeded in making me feel guilty, but what bothers me is the pointlessness of that — there are no real 'final girls' being exploited by this world's enjoyment of the trope. That part of the concept ('what if slashers were based on true stories?') just didn't land with me.

It doesn't help that I despised the main character the whole time. Once again, Hendrix pulled me in with the supporting cast and had me invested for them, so it was really just the constant separations and isolation of Lynette that I struggled with.

A highlight for me was the uh… museum. The whole concept of that, with that character, I found incredibly original and fascinating.