Review: The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

One thing I love is a good scary movie from the 1980s, before horror movies became all about the gore and shock value. When I read the synopsis of Grady Hendrix's novel, The Final Girl Support Group, I knew it was something I would have to read. It follows the lives of several "final girls" decades after they each became the sole survivor in their own real-life horror movie. Many of these women's tales inspired hokey film franchises and tell-all books written by horror-obsessed fans. Lynette is one of these final girls and finds life after tragedy to be difficult, to put it mildly. Scared that she'll one day be the target of a psychotic killer again, she practically lives as a shut-in, literally behind a cage she's installed in her apartment. She has no one in her life, besides a plant she talks to and her fellow final girls, who meet monthly for a group therapy session in secret. All of Lynette's precautions prove inadequate though when the final girls become the target of someone who wants them all dead. She must face her fears of the outside world and put decades' worth of preparation into action if she wants to survive and save the only people who understand her.

This book was a fun read! It got a bit over-the-top with the gore and violence for me in a few bits, but I'm not going to hold that against the story because it is in the appropriate horror genre. It honestly felt like I was watching a modern-day horror movie. There were a lot of connections to famous horror films like Halloween, Friday the 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Scream, just to name a few. I found myself spooked quite a few times while reading this late at night when I was the only one in the house awake. My biggest complaint is that the ending to the big scene at the end seemed a little rushed. I went back a few pages just to make sure I hadn't accidentally skipped over a big chunk because I couldn't really believe that was it. The build up to the scene was great and then it just deflated. There were also several instances throughout the novel where the characters were just too unbelievable or stared to annoy me. Lynette could be very repetitive and whiny. Also, there's no way the cops would have acted towards Lynette the way they did in the novel. I mean, they refuse her right to a lawyer, lock her up for days while taunting her with graphic material related to her traumatic past. Maybe a handful of cops would've been jerks, but an entire station psychologically abusing someone like that without repercussions just seems so far-fetched. 

Overall, The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix is worth your time, especially if you're a fan of classic horror movies. Despite some minor issues with the story, it is mostly fast-paced and suspenseful with some surprising twists and a lot of bad-ass female characters. 

My Rating: ★★★★☆

At the time of this post, this title is set to be released on July 13th, 2021.

*Thanks to the author, Berkley Publishing Group, and Netgalley for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review!