The Final Girl Support Group

by Grady Hendrix

Hardcover, 2021

Status

Available

Call number

PS3608.E543

Genres

Collections

Fiction, Horror, Thriller

Publication

Berkley (2021), 352 pages

Description

Fiction. Horror. Suspense. Thriller. HTML: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 TodayA 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, the… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member Cherylk

My first introduction to this author was with Horrorstör. I could not read that book fast enough. From there, I wanted to read more. Yet, I got behind and missed reading several of this author's book until The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires. To be honest, I did not like The

Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires. In fact, I barely got a third of the way into that book when I DNF'd it.

So, when I saw this latest book, I had some hesitation. However, the premise was too good to pass up checking it out. Um...hello. I just finished reading this book. It did not disappoint. Fans of this author will be in for a real treat. I enjoyed this book so much that I am willing to give this author another chance to wow me with hopefully his next book as well.

I like the "campy" slasher film vibes this book is giving me. It references to so many famous movies like Jason and Scream. Horror fans alike will like this book. Lets cheer for the final girls. The ones that survived only to keep surviving every day.

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LibraryThing member isabelx

Men don’t have to pay attention the way we do. Men die because they make mistakes. Women? We die because we’re female.

I was expecting this to be scarier than it was, and ended up changing my tag from horror to mystery as this book is not really a horror story. A very enjoyable tale about the

members of a support group for women who have survived the kind of terrible events that horror films are base on, and what happens when one of the group members doesn't turn up for their latest session.

I loved it. Lots of twists and turns and a great ending.

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LibraryThing member rivkat

What if hand-massacring groups of teenagers had become just as popular as school shootings? The most well-known survivors of two rounds of attacks have a support group in LA, until things start going bad—one killed, others endangered and also accused of participating in/organizing the murder

sprees they survived. Like other Hendrix books, it’s both about the harm that women do to each other and the patriarchal system in which they do it. Nothing supernatural and ultimately I didn’t find it to be a workable alternate world precisely for the reasons explained by one of the many “nonfiction inserts” in the book: School shootings became widespread because guns are different.

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LibraryThing member ecataldi

Good gory fun - I am never disappointed in Grady Hendrix! I really liked the premise of this novel - a bunch of final girls meet monthly with their counselor to talk about their struggles. If you're wondering what a final girl is - it's the last girl standing after a massacre or mass murderer -

usually the smartest and most resourceful girl who takes matters into her own hands and ends up killing the killer. After one of their members doesn't show for a meeting, Lynette Tarkington is on high alert. She is sure that someone is targeting the final girls. What's next is a wild ride with lost of twists and turns and wrong guesses. I especially enjoyed learning about the backstories of each of the final girls as the story progressed. Gory and great.

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LibraryThing member choirchik

So good; this hooked me (lol) from the very beginning. Sometimes a book doesn't live up to the blurb the publisher provides, but this book totally did. I liked the premise of the story, and particularly enjoyed the different murder scenarios the ladies survived and how they followed 80's/90's

horror movies. The police transcripts, newspaper clippings, medical files, etc. before each chapter were pretty neat. It is a fairly easy read as well, and if I had more free time I probably could have read it in less than a week.

One thing that I did not like was the narrator. She was so flighty and basically annoying. She *always* had the killer pinpointed and when it turned out not to be that person she was all 'j/k I meant this person.' Ummmm, ok. Spoiler alert, she gets the crap beaten out of her by one of the other girls and it was amazing. She deserved it just for being annoying.

There were a few parts of the book that I just skimmed. I'm not someone that likes super detailed descriptions. There were a couple of places where Lynette details everything on her excursions and at the end, so there were probably 10 pages I skimmed, and I didn't miss anything.

Overall I thought it was a great read, and my brother has already started reading it, too. Definitely recommend.

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LibraryThing member whitewavedarling

I was so excited about this book, but I ended up giving up on it about 50% through--and to be honest, I probably would have given up and DNF'd at closer to the 25% mark if I hadn't been reading it for a book club. This is a book that I'd say is more clever than good--and if you're super-familiar

with all or most of the slashers Hendrix uses as reference points, and don't mind a horror read being more campy fun and easter egg-hunt than anything else, you might love this. My husband enjoyed it, but he's seen most of the slashers over and over again, to where he got all of the references easily. I did not, and learned most of them through book club discussion...but I'm afraid that only made me think less of the book, as it felt like it had been more of a game/challenge on the author's part than a fully conceptualized and developed novel. So, to put it bluntly... I'm not impressed.

Part of the problem is POV. In the first section especially (of the 1.75 I read), the first-person narration happens at such breakneck speed, the whole story really has no emotional depth. If it's all the one same beat, with every moment constantly being driven by the mentality of 'I must survive'. It's exhausting, and maybe Hendrix was doing it to make a point, but it made for an exhausting read that didn't have any emotional depth. The second issue is character action; there are a lot of moments/decisions that are far more campy than believable. In a slasher, that might work really well. In a novel, at least for this reader, they only made for a more and more frustrating read. And, as I kept going, the main POV character not only got less believable, but less redeemable, with the surrounding characters' actions and decisions also becoming progressively less believable.

I'm afraid there's no way I could recommend this book, and it's probably going to be a hard sell for me to try another Hendrix read.

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LibraryThing member jmchshannon

The Final Girl Support Group is another strong novel by Grady Hendrix. While not quite as terrifying as some of his earlier novels, the premise is refreshingly different. After all, horror fans know who a final girl is, but we never find out what happens to final girls once the cops arrive on the

scenes. So, Mr. Hendrix shows us what happens to them as they struggle to put the gory events behind them. As expected, some final girls have a better time adjusting to their lives post-horror events, while others find those events dictating their every waking moment. As is true in every Hendrix novel, the characters are deliciously messy and complex. You find your sympathies waxing and waning in each scene depending on the actions. Add in someone who seems to be stalking the remaining final girls, and you have something that is equal parts mystery, thriller, and horror story.

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LibraryThing member dcoward

This was an odd book. I'm not even sure how to describe it - it is set in an alternate world where "final girl" is not just a horror movie troupe, but an actual think. It was fun and had interesting characters tho.

LibraryThing member sturlington

I don't even like slasher movies, but this is the second book that I've read in close succession that was basically a love letter to the genre, and I thought it was great fun (the other book was My Heart Is a Chainsaw, and certainly these two novels make a good double feature). Hendrix's books have

been hit or miss for me, but I appreciate how he plays around with well-worn tropes and humanizes the stock characters of the horror genre. In this case, the trope is the final girl: the last survivor of a slasher movie who kills the baddie--but no one knows or cares what happens to her after the police arrive. In this novel, slasher-type massacres were an actual "trend" during the '80s and '90s, and all of the well-known films were based on real-life cases (you won't have to be a slasher-movie fan to recognize the references--these movies are embedded in the culture now). The survivors of these massacres, two decades older now and coping (or not) with their trauma in various ways, meet once a month in a church basement as a support group. The narrator is Lynette, who is obsessively paranoid, convinced that the Monster will return and there will be a "sequel"--and when one of the other final girls doesn't show up for group, it seems like she may be right. After being shot at in her apartment, Lynette goes on the run, which turns out to be a cinematic, plot-twisting, page-turning ride. I tore through this book in two days. I thought it was fun, clever, campy in all the right parts, and fairly feminist (if maybe a bit heavy-handed in that department). A good follow-up to The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires.

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LibraryThing member Jynell

Maybe I wasn't in the mood, but this one just fell short for me. I enjoyed the drama of the girls and the idea that they remained in therapy, but overall, it wasn't enough to hold my attention and I ended up not finishing it.

LibraryThing member ToriC90

**spoiler alert** I listened to this on audio and so I probably missed a few small pieces as I was multitasking, however the twists! They just kept coming! I think it was just a few too many twists for my taste… by the end I just wanted to know who it actually was, maybe no longer took it as

seriously. Kind of reminded me of The Burning Girls by CJ Tudor, mixed with Final Girl by Riley Sager, mixed with Southern Bookclub’s Guide for Slaying Vampires by same author, Grady Hendrix. The group of women vibe definitely reminded me of southern bookclub which was fun because I liked that book but also meh, probably because I recently read that one so felt repetitive.

Part of the book I didn’t get, was the age of the therapist’s son?!? I feel like he was originally younger… but maybe an editor said that could get creepy since these women are in their… 40s?… also vague. But I’ll admit, the 26 year old son was also still weird and still kind of creepy. Not so much because of age but because of how he was written into the story which again made him seem MUCH younger… so remembering this, maybe this is closer to a 2….

I liked this. But I didn’t love it. I’ve purposefully read a lot of final girl style books recently and while this isn’t my least favorite, there was just SO MUCH happening… and while I was intrigued, I also didn’t really care…. Hopefully that makes sense?

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LibraryThing member Jthierer

I think this book is actually hampered by its high concept and would have been better served to just focus on the story. Essentially, this book starts from the premise that all of those classic 80s/90s slasher flicks were based on real events and happened to real people. Those real people then form

a support group and their story is interspersed with fictional analyses and factoids of the movies based on their experiences. Its an intriguing premise but it felt like Hendrix wasn't quite sure where to take that concept once he came up with it. That said, this book was definitely a fast-paced read and I was surprised by the ending (although perhaps I shouldn't have been).

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LibraryThing member susan.h.schofield

I won an ARC of this book from Goodreads. It is definitely more horror than thriller which isn't really a genre I enjoy. But it was very fast paced and held my interest - I wanted to know who was after the Final Girls. I could definitely see this being made into a movie or miniseries.

LibraryThing member sublunarie

It's been a long time since I've read a book the year it was published. It's been a long time since I've so thoroughly loved ever second I've spent with a book.

Grady Hendrix loves horror the way I love horror, and when you're writing a horror book that's really important. I have read horror novels

from author's that engage in horror in alternate ways and they just don't sit right with me.

But this masterpiece filled me with joy and elation every step of the way.

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LibraryThing member JJbooklvr

This will keep you guessing right to the end! I also loved trying to guess the different horror references sprinkled throughout.

LibraryThing member bookczuk

Summer 2021 pandemic resurgence/Delta variant read. Despite not being a horror fan, or familiar with slasher movies, I liked this book.

LibraryThing member AngelaJMaher

I heard a lot of positive word of mouth about this book and it didn't disappoint. The story steamrolls on mercilessly but with lots of twists and evolutions, and it was genuinely hard to put down. Even though it made me feel really paranoid the first night after I started reading it.

LibraryThing member seongeona

I've loved all the Grady Hendrix books so far, but this one not so much. I'm familiar with the "final girl" trope but usually don't watch those kinds of movies, so alot of the references went over my head. I often felt lost as if chapters were missing, names were mentioned as if I should know who

that is and the significance of them. My bad. However, despite that, I almost didn't get past the first several pages because I felt the arguing during the group meeting was dull and I couldn't distinguish between the girls (little individuality) and the point-of-view was so uninteresting (I understood, though, that this was how she coped) and dragged on. It did pick up by the 3rd chapter and become much more interesting once the action started, and was hard to put down, but it remains in my personal opinion my least favorite by far of Hendrix' novels. Perhaps I'll watch some of the movies referenced and re-read in the hope it will make more sense.

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LibraryThing member DianaTixierHerald

A great read for fans of the slasher movies that were popular in the last quarter of the 20th century. Following a standard trope of the genre where one teen girl or young woman is the sole survivor of a massacre, a group of women who were the final survivors of slasher attacks meets regularly with

a councilor decades after their life changing terror event. Just after talk of ending the event, Lynette who has built her life around being safe is attacked and discovers someone is out to get all the final girls leading her into more horrifying and some humorous situations. She does everything she can, to stop another massacre even going so far as to kidnap a contemporary victim. Entertaining but gory and violent.

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LibraryThing member wellreadcatlady

I received a ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Final Girl Support Group is for women who survived horrific events that became well known slasher films, you'll recognize the women from Scream, Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Friday the 13th,

but they won't be outright named. There is also Lynnette, a final girl with a unique background and continues to live her life prepared for any situation where she suspects any person can be after her. When one of the final girls doesn't show up for group Lynnette automatically becomes paranoid and when several other strange events occur to the members of the group Lynnette concludes someone is after final girls.

I enjoyed the background given to characters in these movies that were kind of glossed over and showed real mental health issues that happen to people who experience trauma. There were times it was hard to keep track of who was from which movie, but it really doesn't matter. Lots of twist and turns and good commentary about how society views the women in these horror movies. Worth reading if you enjoy slashes movies and holds up to Hendrix's books, so fans will enjoy!

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LibraryThing member miss.mesmerized

For years, Lynnette Tarkington has done everything to keep a low profile, not to be found and to be absolutely secure in her apartment which is equipped according to her needs: security cameras outside, several locks, a cage to hinder any intruder from getting close to her. She has a reason to be

careful, she is a final girl, the only person surviving a massacre. She is not alone, there are more girls who share this fate and for more than a decade, they have been meeting regularly in a self-help group led by Dr Carol. But now, somebody seems to try to finish what hadn’t been completed before: killing the final girls. After the first of them has died and Lynnette is attacked in her apartment, she is sure: all the others are in danger and she needs to warn them. Yet, one question remains: who is the killer?

Grady Hendrix’ novel is a roller coaster ride though a kind of teenage horror and splatter movie, just like the ones that were highly popular during the 1990s. Lynnette, the first person narrator, does not seem to be totally reliable, quite obviously, the events she had to go through did leave some scars, not only on the outside, but much more importantly on her psyche. She is a bit strange, to put it nicely, or crazy when judging her behaviour from the outside. Yet, she could be right, somebody might try to kill them, but maybe this also only happens in her head. As a reader, it takes some time to decide which perspective to take.

I absolutely enjoyed the novel, it is just like the movies, fast paced, a bit over the top, some quite scary moments which make it highly entertaining. However, it is not only a shallow novel, there some depths when it comes to what such an experience does to a victim and also how people react to a single survivor who becomes a popular figure due to such an horrendous cruelty.

There are some cruel horror scenes with a lot of violence, so the novel surely isn’t for everybody, me, personally, I had great fun reading it.

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LibraryThing member gpangel

The Final Girls Support Group by Grady Hendrix is a 2021 Berkley publication.

The Final Girls- We all know what that phrase means...

In present day- six famous or infamous 'final girls' belong to a secret support group, moderated by Dr. Carol Elliot. Unfortunately, someone is trying to kill them

off- one by one. Despite all their precautions, they are all once again in the fight of their lives…

Before reading this novel, I had read three Hendrix books and really liked them, when this book came out, I excitedly added it to my TBR list- but then I noticed quite of few lukewarm ratings and reviews and got cold feet. But since it’s September, I’ve been scrolling through my TBR pile for Fall/Halloween reads and noticed this one had been languishing on the list for over a year. I needed to either read it or remove it. I was nervous, but I just couldn’t scratch a Grady Hendrix book off my list without at least giving it a chance.

I don’t know what this says about me, but while my peers jeered this one- I cheered it. Truly, though, this is not exactly a pure horror novel- it’s more of a mystery/thriller, really, but Hendrix is satirizing the slasher films, so in a way it still fits into the horror genre.

I say the book is partly a satire, but it was also a homage, and a bit nostalgic, as well. The humor is sly and those well versed in slasher films will love all the references, the final girl trope, and even the clichés. The book moves fast, though not always cohesively, but there’s plenty of action, and the story even has a bit of depth and adds a long overdue feminist viewpoint.

I’m glad I gave this book a try, and though I have now enjoyed all four books I’ve read by Hendrix, I must admit this one is not his best work- though I don’t agree with the overly harsh criticism of it, at all- and wondered if maybe it was a bit misunderstood. The story does some issues, for sure, but I thought it was a wildly entertaining, if a bit unorthodox, thriller, and I rather enjoyed it.

3.5 stars rounded up.

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LibraryThing member IreneCole

A group of 6 "Final Girls" meet once a month for a group therapy session that seems more like a place to argue and insult each other than to recover from past trauma. Now someone is out to kill them all... I guess because that is what's supposed to happen, the slashers in horror movies keep coming

back no matter how many times you manage to kill them and survive. But who is it? Which monster has found out about the group? Who is coming to kill them after all this time? Or maybe it's more than one person. What if it's several all working together? Now it's up to Lynette to find out who is after them before there is no one left to save. They never considered Lynette to be a true Final Girl because she didn't have to kill her attacker to survive. Maybe this time she will outlive them all.
I really wanted to love this book more than I was able to. It was a great idea and I'm not entirely sure why it missed the mark with me. I think it is partly because the characters in this book are heavily "borrowed" from or at least based on the survivors of old slasher movies that I enjoyed. Because of that I already had my own ideas about their personalities and the way they might behave. In this book, these survivors mostly do not like each other, or themselves so I didn't like them much either. It also felt more like an action/thriller to me than a horror. There were lots of exciting action scenes but nothing that was really scary.

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LibraryThing member SheriAWilkinson

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

This is the story of a group of "final girls, the last survivors of brutal attacks/murders. Lynnette attends (a group) with other survivors. Then one day one of them doesn't show up. Soon their lives are in danger unless Lynnette can figure out who wants

them dead, and why.

A fast paced page-turning thrilling read. Engaging dialog, attention to detail, shocking surprises and non stop suspense. I was on the edge of my seat until the end. Overall I enjoyed The Final Girl Support Group and highly recommend to those who enjoy thrilling suspense filled reads.

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LibraryThing member AdonisGuilfoyle

I remember watching trashy 80s slasher films when I was young, and loved spotting the tropes in this ode to the 'final girl', or the virgin who survives the massacre and kills the 'monster'. The final chapters in particular are filled with the twists and turns of 'don't turn your back, they're not

dead!' I have never seen the Friday the 13th series, shock horror, or the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but I picked out Nightmare on Elm Street (Heather), Halloween (Dani) and Scream (Julia - a reference to Party of Five?)

The story is full of film references and in jokes, reworking the famous franchises as 'true crime' cash-ins, but also takes the survivors' stories beyond the credits and into adulthood. What happens to the final girls when they are in their 30s and life has moved on? The first few chapters are fairly slow paced, full of final girl paranoia and preparation and an unreliable narrator, but when history started repeating, putting the group at risk, I was hooked (no pun intended!) I also spotted one of the 'monsters' but needed the second spelling out for me.

Probably more entertaining with a greater knowledge of the films, but I loved the mix of 80s camp and modern cynicism anyway!

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