I have loved every one of Grady Hendrix's books and this one is no exception. I'd say it's up there alongside My Best Friend's Exorcism as a sly, loving ode to horror cinema that takes a classic concept and injects it with fresh blood. Fast-paced and hella sharp, this has a fantastically complex hero and a great twist ending. Brilliant.

First of all, I'd love to thank NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Lynette Tarkington is a final girl. She has a traumatic past and is the only survivor of a tragic mass murder that continues to haunt her sixteen years afterwards. She and other survivors make up The Final Girl Support Group. When one of the group members has been brutally killed, it doesn't take long to work out that this monster is on a mission to kill all the Final Girls. Lynette must face all sorts of challenges to protect her friends and to put a stop to the violence and murder once and for all...

I really love Grady Hendrix's writing style and some parts of the book were really enjoyable to me. The story is full of action and is quite creepy in parts which builds up to a very gripping ending. However, it didn't completely blow my mind. There are a couple of twists and turns in this book, but for me it wasn't terribly exciting.

That being said, I still love Grady Hendrix and will continue to read anything he writes.

Thank you so much again to NetGalley for letting me read this ARC and thank you for reading this review.

This review will go live on 13 July:

Hi and welcome to my review of The Final Girl Support Group!

Last year I dipped my toe into Grady Hendrix’s writing with The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires and I fell for it head over heels. Afterwards I spent a few months catching up with Mr Hendrix’s backlist, but I soon ran out, and so I had been waiting very impatiently for a new novel. When I first laid eyes on the title, my grabby hands got even grabbier: I love the whole final girl thing. Riley Sager’s Final Girls, and more recently Goldy Moldavsky’s The Last Girl (UK) / The Mary Shelley Club (USA), I gobbled those up, and of course I’m was (and still am, really) a huge fan of the 80s and 90s slasher films that inspired these stories and coined the term “final girl”.

The final girl in films is literally the last person standing, often in a puddle of blood. The girl next door, the only one who has misgivings before people start to die, the one who not only gets away, but gets away with murder as she is the one who defeats the killer. (Until he has to come back for the sequel of course.)

The Final Girl Support Group explores what happens to those final girls once the dust settles. The story is told from the POV of Lynette – a not-quite final girl since she didn’t actually kill her Monster – whose way to deal with what happened is withdrawing from society. Extremely paranoid and prone to anxiety attacks, she only leaves her extra secured apartment when she really has to, like for grocery shopping, or to attend the monthly support group sessions with five other (actual) final girls and a therapist. But suddenly the final girls are under attack, again.

Is someone really targeting the members of the support group? Who and why? Lynnette sees conspiracy theories everywhere, and I thoroughly enjoyed not knowing for sure whether she was actually right or just extremely paranoid. Or both.

The Final Girl Support Group is just spot on. As I’ve come to expect from Grady Hendrix, the story is something between thriller and horror and very much tongue in cheek. Every little detail is just so, from the titles of the chapters to the narrative itself, and I loved every minute of reading it.

By now, I know to expect the unexpected from Grady Hendrix. I’ll read the blurb, gush over the cover and think I have an idea of what the story’s going to be, but I’m always wrong cos there’s always a twist, not just in the narrative, although there are plenty of twists there as well, but a twist in the kind of story I’m expecting, I never end up quite where I thought I would.

Grady Hendrix has this fab mix of horror and humour going on that I really gel with. I’ve been told I sound like a teenager with a Bieber poster on the wall when talking about Mr Hendrix and his books, and to be honest, I’m pretty sure that’s pretty accurate but I don’t care 😂

The Final Girl Support Group is a parody, it’s an homage, it’s one hundred percent brilliant and if you liked the slasher films and scream queens and final girls of yore, this is most definitely a must read. Highly recommended.

The Final Girl Support Group is out today in digital formats, hardcover and audio.

Massive thanks to Titan Books and NetGalley for the e-ARC. All opinions are still my own.

The Final Girl Support Group is the latest release from popular author Grady Hendrix.
As the title suggests it is a play on the Final Girl trope so popular in slasher films. Hendrix puts a unique twist on it by setting the story amongst a group of " Final Girls" who meet up for regular therapy sessions as peers who have a unique shared history of trauma. Each of the women have survived brutal assaults and escaped killers who have massacred their friends and families. They each have their own coping mechanisms, one is ultra-prepared for any eventuality with panic rooms and grab bags for a quick escape, another has disappeared to a remote ranch, one has turned to drugs and alcohol to dull the memories, while another has tried to shop them away. Whatever their chosen coping strategy, they are getting through, one day at a time, until the day when one of them is killed and it soon becomes apparent that they are all targets. Their best chance of survival may be to work together to protect each other, but can they trust each other enough , and even if they can, is it really such a good idea?
So begins a fast paced twisting and turning thriller that grabs the reader's attention and takes them on quite the thrill ride. Once the set up is out of the way, the pace is brisk , and there is plenty to keep the reader guessing and second guessing. As you might expect from a book of this nature, there are definitely some gory passages with very vivid descriptions , so those of a more squeamish disposition might want to skim ahead. A nice little touch was the inclusion of snippets from therapy sessions, police notes and magazine and newspaper articles , they gave a feeling of realism that I liked. While I could see some similarities to Final Girls by Riley Sager, another book I enjoyed, this has more of a horror /thriller vibe and anyone who has an affinity for the classic slasher genre in movies will enjoy this book.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

If anyone wondered how Grady Hendrix was going to follow up on the amazing Southern Book Club’s Guide to Vampire Slaying (which omg has been optioned for a tv series!) then his decision to visit with one of the most fascinating and unique parts of horror will come as a relief. For every Michael Myers, there has to be a Laurie Strode. She’s The Final Girl, the one left standing, bloodied and bruised, but still brave - and very often still clutching the knife or machete with which she has dispatched her nightmarish attacker. The Final Girl is so iconic and ubiquitous that more than one filmmaker has gone meta (Scream anyone?) and she is even the subject of multiple academic works. Yet what Hendrix has done still manages to be a unique as Southern Book Club. This is a story in which these traumatised girls have grown up to be….well….traumatised middle aged women. Six women who all went through the unspeakable. Six woman who managed to run for their lives and survive. And for all of their fame and movie adaptations, for all of their therapy, some of these women have never managed to stop running. It is quite fitting that the pace of Hendrix’s The Final Girl Support Group is as frenetic as any escape from a slasher or serial killer. The main character’s narration is panicked, frantic. She is running on hysteria and adrenaline and trauma. It can be hard for the reader to catch their own breath during the action. It can even be hard for the reader to know what is real and what is imagined.
A clever addition to the final girl mythos, with extra kudos to Hendrix for his additions of academic works on the women in his support group, descriptions of movies based on their lives, and the ridiculousness of reddit threads.

The Final Girl Support Group was definitely different to the other Grady Hendrix book I have read, The Southern Book Clubs Guide to Slaying Vampires, in that, I didn't find the horror elements to be nearly as graphic or intense.

We are following a group of "final girls" and finding out more about them, what happened to them, and finding out more about who is out to get them.

I will admit that the beginning of the book I found to be a bit confusing, it took me about 20% (and asking a friend!) to work out which character's perspective we were hearing from, the voices didn't always entirely feel different, but once I got my head round this, and the general plot, things started to make sense.

There was certainly a lot of action to follow, but it wasn't necessarily fast paced action, but there were definitely points where I couldn't stop reading to find out what happened next.

The only issue with the e-book was that there was media at the beginning of chapters which due to my kindle, I couldn't read.

Overall, a solid thriller/horror book from Grady Hendrix and looking forward to my final copy arriving!

*The Final Girl's Support Group* by Grady Hendrix presented a new perspective on classic slasher stories - what happens after them?

Lynnette and five other 'final girls' have already survived their worst nightmares and are still trying to piece their lives together years later. The trouble is, someone doesn't want them to.

I particularly enjoyed the commentry on mass shootings, toxic masculinity and often derogitory female horror tropes. It examined people's reactions to trauma and complicated female friendships in a depth that I don't normally see but really appreciate.

"You don't want someone angry at you, especially a man, so you say yes to things you don't want to do because there's no road map for where you are, nothing to guide you except a neon sign in your head that says: Do not make men angry."

Ocassionally it erred a little on the 'crazy lady' trope but its overal message still shone through. I would also say the plot to me was predictable however it was still a great meta look at the genre.

I wouldn't hesitate to reccomend to slasher movie fan's. (Especially with the amount of horror easter eggs sprinkled throughout!)

*Thank you to Netgalley and Titan Books for gifting me an advanced reader's copy.*

This is only the second book I’ve read by this author. I don’t tend to read horror books and this one sounded more mystery/thriller so figured I’d give it a go. While I liked it for the most part, I found it a bit drawn out. It didn’t really grip me, but I still kept reading to find out what way the story would pan out in the end. I’m sure fans of Hendrix will enjoy this one, I don’t know if I’m the right reader for it.

I loved the premise behind this, but I honestly wished it had been shorter and sharper. It didn't feel like a horror story, although there was lots of blood and gore, there wasn't really enough tension. I think it'd translate to the big screen really well though. It was also a bit tricky keeping track of all the different girls at the beginning, but fact that they are final girls is the important thing. The other thing that works better visually is someone fighting to keep going, it's hard to describe the balance between determination and injury.
Not my favourite book from this author, but I do look forward to the film.

Grady Hendrix clearly loves a horror flick (the names of the characters here, let alone their backgrounds, ought to be enough to tell you that), and this is simultaneously an ode to and interrogation of the slasher movie. It asks what happens after the credits roll, and what’s it like inside the head of the lone survivor, dealing with that unbelievable trauma, as well as considering the misogyny and violence against women that is the engine driving these movies we all thrill to. But it’s not some po-faced treatise, as all these musings are wrapped up in a fast moving plot that takes in enough action, gore and thrills to satisfy any fan of Halloween or Friday 13th. It’s an homage to the slasher movie that celebrate its heights while not excusing its lows, and open-minded fans of the genre are going to get a lot out of it.

Once again Grady Hendrix has knocked it out of the park with his take on classic horror tropes. While I have enjoyed modern looks at the final girl trope, this is the first time seeing one that takes place so many years after their gruesome run-ins with serial killers. All the women in the final girl's support group are shown to naturally still be traumatised, but Lynne’s paranoia is one of the most extreme coping methods of the group. Lynne only leaves the house for the group, carries multiple weapons, has backup plans for backup plans and so much more. But when someone starts killing the final girls, Lynne’s decade long paranoid efforts to survive fall apart and soon she finds herself alone, with no allies and floundering to figure out who is attacking them. It would have been so easy to have Lynne’s paranoid preparation be more successful, to have an entertaining standoff between her and the killers, but I liked that her plans fell apart quickly. It showed that living the way she did for so long wasn’t worth it and didn’t help in the very situation it was meant to. While some of the precautions she took did help (having extra cash and IDs) it was tragic to see how her self-imposed isolation was ultimately pointless.

Hendrix’s talent for female friendships once again shines here. All the final girls are messy characters and their complicated relationships are so well drawn. They don’t have each other’s backs all the time and things are often rocky for them but when push comes to shove, they have each other’s backs. The villain was a great modern monster and a perfect update to typical slasher villains. Hendrix is also known for playing with book formats and I loved how he did it in this book. At the start of each chapter, we get a clipping from an in universe scholarly article, interview, police reports etc to learn more about the wider world and the horrors that made the final girls. These outside articles add a deeper sense of horror to the final girls’ stories. The gore and violence they have experienced are awful, but I was more horrified by how they were all treated after they became final girls. All their tragedies are turned into film series and we get articles analysing and ranking these films and it’s all so dehumanising. A lot of the final girls were groomed and abused right after their tragedies when they were the most vulnerable by people pushing them into the media, interviews, films, and books. At every step in their lives when they become final girls there is someone determined to exploit them for money. Overall, this is another great horror book from Hendrix and a modern update on the slasher genre.

If you like your novels dark and gritty and don’t mind some violence and gore then this may fit the bill! If you’re a fan of slasher movies then this is certainly up your alley as it’s a pastiche or homage to the genre and probably a bit tongue in cheek.

'The Final Girls Support Group' is the latest horror offering from celebrated author Grady Hendrix whose back catalogue includes haunted IKEA stores (Horrorstor), possessed BFFs (My Best Friend's Exorcism), and rock groups selling their souls to the devil (We Sold Our Souls).

In 'Final Girls', we find a coterie of Final Girls - the lone survivors of horrifying massacres - meeting, somewhat ineffectually, to try and work through their trauma, when they hear that one of their number has been slaughtered, causing them to realise that they may be being hunted down.

The story is, at its core, a love letter to horror media, particularly slashers, and it's no surprise that Hendrix is so at ease with the level of meta-narrative on play here, given his clear adoration and veneration of the horror tropes. Chapters are interpersed with police records and newspaper interviews from our collection of Final Girls and others, showing how each of them dealt with the aftermath of their trauma - points for spotting some of the references to horror movies sprinkled throughout.

Hendrix's writing style has sharpened and refined in recent years and Final Girls fights in neatly as part of a trilogy with My Best Friend's Exorcism and last year's runaway hit The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires. The latter novel in particular, an 80s Stephen-King-esque Dracula take, serves as a mirror to Final Girls - both are concerned with groups of women with a shared bond coming together in the face of an evil that seems larger and more terrifying than they could ever dream of, and while Southern Book Club is about trauma and responsibility, Final Girls is about what happens afterwards, about picking up the pieces and moving on, something Hendrix does with aplomb.

The biggest credit I can give to this work is that even when you're exploring what happens after the credits roll on a blood-soaked horror flick, it manages to still be fun and entertaining, with a group of characters you grow to care and root for - Lynnette, our lead, is paranoid and resilient, wheelchair-bound Julia is defiant, socialite Final Girl Marilyn is cool and aloof - even when they're being their worst selves.

Ultimately, Final Girls Support Club is a triumph of genre and voice - in disassembling and reassembling a well-loved horror trope and giving it new meaning and purpose, Hendrix not only gives voices to those left behind, but brings you along for a hell of a ride as well.

A Final Girl is considered those who are the last surviving victim of a horror movie. Lynnette Tarkington is a real life final girl who survived a massacre twenty-two years ago. She has been meeting with five other actual final girls and their therapist, Dr. Carol Elliott, in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, putting their lives back together. That is until one of the women, Adrienne, misses a meeting and Lynnette’s worst fears are realized that someone knows about the group and is determined to take their lives apart again, piece by piece. I loved the premise & thought there’d be some horror, but it’s more suspense drama. It’s cool that the characters are taken from the 80s-90s horror movies (Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Nightmare on Elm Street, etc). My review is a 2.5 roundup to 3. Thanks to Titan Books and NetGalley for a gifted copy. This is my honest review.

This book was amazing! It was a cheesy 80s horror slasher movie in a book. The author fleshed out the characters enough that you cared about their journey while relying on horror movie tropes and stories we know so well. There were parts of this book that I felt was too far fetched and you had to suspend belief a bit but on reflection I feel that is intended because it's like that in classic horror. Its not scary at all but fans of horror films will love it and the books pacing and sense of urgency is fantastic. I loved this book.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

For more than a decade, Lynette Tarkington along with a number of other "final girls" has been meeting with a therapist in a support group. But one day, the first "final girl" misses a meeting, making Lynette realise that someone knows about their group.

This is the second Grady Hendrix novel that I've read, and both times the story has been conceptually great. They feel familiar but also new and fresh. I also love the stylistic choices that he makes - in this case, newspaper clippings, interview transcripts and film reviews at the end of each chapter.

The twists in this one were obvious once they were revealed, but the rug was pulled out from under my feet so many times that I truly wasn't expecting that last reveal. I do think that the book was slightly too long, there was a lot of getting to and from each place, but I like that the story ended where it originated.

Being an expert on the horror tropes used in movies and books, Grady sets about introducing his 6 final girls and their therapist, all cheekily named after horror alumni. Then, he puts them in danger, sets fire to their escape route and throws red herring after red herring in their way to self, and public, redemption.

In her non-fiction essay, 'Something Out Of Place: Women and Disgust', Eimear McBride defines and differentiates between flesh and meat, in the way that women are either subsumed, or consumed. This feels mightily apt when reading the very cleverly deconstructed 'final girl' trope (the virgin, the clever one, the resilient one who managed to survive by killing the 'monster') and then reconstructing it whilst enabling each woman to tell their tale.

From the title-the use of 'girl', is, I suspect, ironic,these are all women-to the final page, these women have become part of the culture in our obsession to make and create celebrities, as each of them tells their backstory, you slowly become aware that the public need for bloodied redemption is a motif where the women become mere numbers whilst the men who commit the crimes? They become martyrs on the bonfire of feminist theory, victims of their mothers, or the girl who turned them down.

Using festival dates-Halloween, Prom Night and so forth-each of these women have seen their trauma re-invented, some have benefitted from it, and been castigated for that, others have gone to ground and remain alive because of rituals and routines which keep them sane. Lynette, the narrator, has escape plans for every room she goes into, and is not emotionally attached to anyone or thing, except her plant, 'Fine(short for Final). Her entire family was killed by a prison escapee in a Santa Claus costume, and since, she keeps her hair short-so it cannot be grabbed- wears shoes suitable for running in, leaves no paper traces and has her home fortified like a castle.

Turning up at the support group , which is purely for the women who have been traumatised in this particular way, we are introduced to Marilyn, Dani, Julia, Heather, and Michelle. Their therapist, Dr Clare, is entrusted into this group to follow their rules, their privacy and be focussed on their recovery. Another, Adrienne, has not turned up and when Dr Clare is notified that she has been murdered, fear spreads throughout the group as they begin to realise someone out there is intent on collecting the ultimate in collector's items-the final girls. To succeed where their killers failed, doubt is cast on any of their alibis, suggesting collusion with their monsters, casting doubt on lawful imprisonment and sweeping all their progress of the past decade away down the sink.

As panic and need for survival sweeps through the women, the moment which Lynette has been preparing for has arrived and she goes on the run, simultaneously working out why someone is after them and who it is. Before long, she realises that in order to survive, again, the women need to stick together. Each has a facet of themselves which makes them a fearsome prospect, leading to a chase unlike any I have encountered and culminating in a finale which leaves you breathless and nail-less.

Grady is so adept at writing female protagonists, and he neatly skewers the blood thirsty need of certain people for 'souvenirs' and details of grotesque acts of murder. He intersperses the chapters with excerpts of newspaper reports, interviews, police and judicial records and so forth. They contrast the way in which we view women as public property, by dint of their survival, and those who 'failed' as chalk marks on a killer's tally sheet. He pulls back the sheet and shows you exactly what is lying underneath and too often, the monster's face is our own and we are in a hall of mirrors reflecting back our own sick desire.

The pushback against the casual victimisation of women is not gore streaked, it is filled with a sense of urgency and , whilst there is an element of 'whodunnit', the women have their agency and individuality returned to them. There is such a sense of satisfaction on going through Lynette's journey with her, finding yourself emotionally invested in the survival of a houseplant and there are moments of such intensity, and pathos, that tears came to my eyes.

A wonderful meditation on the modern perception of women, death, and immortality, this will appeal to fans of horror right across the boar-, highly, highly recommended.

First off, I've never read anything by Grady Hendrix before so this was a massive thing to go into but I do love a good slasher.

This story is about perseverance, resilience and sisterhood (the less traditional kind).

We follow Lynette, a final girl, who attends a support group with other final girls hence the Final girl support group. After a member of their group dies, Lynette becomes determined to save the rest of them, going on a dangerous journey in the process.

At the beginning of this, I wasn't so keen on the characters, I found them unlikable but as you learn more about them it becomes clear exactly why they are the way they are. Their determination rubs off on you and all their flaws make them that much more human.

The plot itself was tense and fast, it moved quickly with twists and turns that I was not expecting. It made the books seem so much shorter than it was and I flew through this.

Despite this, I felt that the ending pulled out a lot of things that didn't make sense. While I loved the action, I felt that some of the things that happened were pulled out of nowhere or with little build-up.

I also felt that the bits where you learn about the final girl's events that made them final girls, were rushed and at times I didn't remember who's was who's. I just felt like these were such interesting and important sections that they deserved more time on them.

Overall this was fun, I would recommend it, I mean it's a slasher without the usual set of victims. I liked this difference.

The Final Girl Support Group is a novel about what happens after the credits roll, when the final girl has escaped the first narrative but things aren't over yet. Lynnette survived a massacre over twenty years ago, and lives a carefully guarded existence full of rules and escape plans. She also attends a support group for other "final girls", the last survivors of massacres who (mostly) killed whoever was trying to kill them. When one of the group doesn't show up, Lynnette knows this means her fears have been realised, but with so many killers and their fans out there, it's hard to know who to look out for and how to protect all of the final girls.

Having read a couple of Grady Hendrix's other horror novels, I was intrigued to see how this one would play with the horror genre. What the book does is use and deconstruct the slasher genre, but also looks at how it is influenced by real life crime, with each of the final girls' stories having been turned into a film/franchise, to varying success. The chapters are intercut with documents from the pasts of the women who were final girls, providing some insight into what happened to them but never quite giving away everyone's full story (which I found frustrating occasionally, but that made me question if there is some need to hear the gory details about horrors, real or fictional).

This all sits alongside Lynnette's narration, showing someone whose trauma has turned into a survivalist mentality. She's a complicated narrator, at times difficult to like but also giving the book a unified story that I think I enjoyed more than I would've enjoyed multiple perspectives for this one. The action starts early on, and the book combines horror and thriller so the pace is quite fast, with occasional digressions into the past. There's a good range of clues and red herrings throughout, with a sense that you've got to be thinking in the genre, and the final showdown comes together nicely (well, maybe 'nicely' isn't the best word...).

There's also a side plot (well, it's more of a theme than a plot) around 'murderphernalia' and the general obsession with killers, which serves as both part of the plotline at times and also brings an interesting message at the end as Lynnette tries to highlight the need to remember the victims, not the killers. The horror genre itself probably doesn't help the issue, and the self-aware element of the book is engaging, though doesn't stop it also just being a decent tense horror novel in a slasher/thriller vein.

As with Hendrix's other books, this is horror which takes a specific concept/trope and runs with it, and it's enjoyable to see what is done with the final girl trope and the question of whether or not the killer dies at the end of the film/book.

A thrilling, kitsch ride for horror movie fans.

The sole survivor of a Christmas massacre, Lynette is a compulsive recluse whose sole confidantes are the five other "final girls" in her therapy group and a pot plant. When one of the final girls is killed and another one injured, Lynette must find the new killer and save them all.

The gruesome references to the six crimes which each final girl survived, and their respective horror movie franchises, is a who's who of allusions to horror classics from Halloween to Scream to Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street.

A picture of the six girls and their survival stories builds gradually, which can be confusing at first. The characters themselves are believable and each "final girl" has depth, with the exception of a few horror caricatures (Chrissy and her lurch-like boyfriend) and Lynette's dialogue with her plant, Fine.

Occasionally zigzagging, the plot is full of red herrings and the occasional unnecessary episode but keeps us guessing until the end.

A tongue in cheek homage to the horror genre - where there is always a shriequel and machetes not machine guns are the weapon du jour - makes for a compelling read which is best enjoyed with a pinch of salt. The sheer ridiculousness of it - like the horror movies it echoes - has to be embraced.

(Review will be published at oxfordbook.wordpress.com in July.)