Review: The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

Author: Grady Hendrix

Publisher: Berkley Books

Publication Date: July 2021

In horror movies, the final girl is the one who's left standing when the credits roll. The one who fought back, defeated the killer, and avenged her friends. The one who emerges bloodied but victorious. But after the sirens fade and the audience moves on, what happens to her?

Lynnette Tarkington is a real-life final girl who survived a massacre twenty-two years ago, and it has defined every day of her life since. And she's not alone. For more than a decade she's been meeting with five other actual final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, putting their lives back together, piece by piece. That is until one of the women misses a meeting and Lynnette's worst fears are realized--someone knows about the group and is determined to take their lives apart again, piece by piece.

But the thing about these final girls is that they have each other now, and no matter how bad the odds, how dark the night, how sharp the knife, they will never, ever give up.

I had a lot of fun reading The Final Girl Support Group.  It is told through the perspective of Lynnette Tarkington who is considered a final girl.  In this reality, the slasher movies that I grew up loving in the 80s are based on actual murders that left final girls.  These girls have been meeting in a support group for years.  Now someone is killing them one by one.

This book is definitely a love letter to slasher films.  I loved that aspect of it because I am a huge fan of slasher films. I was eating up the references to the movies I grew up loving.  Lynnette was an interesting character.  Her reaction to her trauma was to live in insolation with no friends.  Her only in person connection was her support group and the psychologist who ran it.  While she had spent all her time trying to be safe, she ended up making a lot of dumb and impulsive decisions throughout the book.
The other characters in the book were fun as well.  It was interesting to see how each final girl dealt with their trauma differently.   The book did keep me guessing.  As with most of this author's books, there is a lot of violence and gore.  It was fairly fast paced and kept me engaged.  I do recommend this one.