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.
The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix. Published by Berkley, 2021. Paper back edition, 341 pages.
I can’t believe this book won GoodReads Choice 2021 Best Horror book. 
I think Grady is a super cool dude. He and I have a lot of horror and book related things in common. His Paperbacks From Hell book should be mandatory reading for every horror fan. I love, love, LOVED his Horrorstor book.
Even though I think he is great, I have a real 50/50 love hate with his fiction novels!! Some I really adore, some I just… well, to put it bluntly… HATE. D: When my local book club picked The Final Girl Support Group as our next read, I was super wary to start this one. D:
Slasher isn’t my fave horror subcategory, but I do love the idea of seeing the final girl’s life after the killer dies. I’ve often talked with friends, after the slasher movie has ended, about how screwed up that girl is gonna be for the rest of her life. It is great seeing someone else talk about that sort of thing! The author also does a really good job talking and showing toxic media coverage as well as toxic coping methods.
My biggest problem with this book was the main character, Lynette. First she went on and on and oooooon about not trusting men. Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand she has PTSD and trust issues with men due to being attacked by 2 men, but it felt like the author was just laying it on waaaaayyyyy too thick. She was just so repetitive!! It grated on your nerves.
As if the repetitiveness wasn’t bad enough, the main character was just SO frustratingly STUPID!! UGH!! D: She loved patting herself on the back about how great she is at being safe and so many steps ahead of the killer, but she kept messing up in the dumbest ways. I didn’t mind any of the other characters, but Lyne was just too hard to get behind. I wanted to beat my head against the wall whenever she did anything. >.<
I enjoyed this book a lot more then I thought I would. There are a lot of twists and turns throughout the last half of the book. Yeah, some you saw coming from a mile away, but some where a pleasant surprise. 😮 I will say, while I do like the reveal about who was behind everything, but I was a little unsure how I felt about the very, very final few pages. Kinda bummed over the end?
Is this a perfect novel? NO. There are a few stumbles here and there. A few of the messages felt a little too shoehorned in. D: The characters are hit or miss, and I’m not sure if I enjoyed how the author wrote female characters? And Grady makes more than a few questionable choices throughout the book.
The Final Girls Support Group is alright. I enjoyed it more that I thought I would…? 😮 It isn’t the best book by this author, but it isn’t the worst either. I think fans of slasher genre would get a kick out of it? Not sure how it won 2021 best horror book choice on GoodReads, though.
Creature From The Book Lagoon 