Book Review
Title: The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Rating: 4.5 Stars
I have read The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix and it was ok, but I have been told that Final Girl Support Group and My Best Friend’s Exorcism are the best works. We are introduced to Lynnette Tarkington and along with Marilyn, Dani, Julia, Adrienne and Heather they make up the final girl support group. All these women survived serial killers or masked killers of some sort in the 80’s that inspired the slasher genre. When Lynette learns of murders at the same place Adrienne was attacked at and later bought where the only survivor is 16 year old, Stephanie Fugate, she knows something is wrong. At their meeting that day they learn that Dani is intending to leave the group and it is the only thing holding Lynette together despite her protests they all learn that Adrienne is dead and any of them could be next.
After the death of Adrienne, the rest of the women scatter returning to their homes or safe spaces. Lynette learns about how Adrienne actually died and she is convinced that all their monsters are coming for them and she has to prepare for the worst. It is easy to see that the backstory and movie franchises in this book are based off real ones such as Scream, Halloween and Friday the 13th which made it quite funny in places when they’ve obviously changed the names but not the plots of the movies. Lynette has left her address with Julia and she violates her promise of only opening the envelope if Lynette misses one of their check-ins to find out where she lives. Lynette obviously reacts badly especially when Julia and a reporter named Russell, prank Lynette in order to get her to let them in. By the time they calm Lynette down enough to explain that someone within the group is writing a book about them and that book is how Adrienne’s killer found her again, the police begin opening fire on them. Lynette saves herself leaving both Russell and Julia behind to potentially die in order to follow her escape plans but she quickly realises that someone knows about them and has prevented her from using them. With no other options Lynette turns to Dr. Carol who runs their group and she puta Lynette up for the night and actually manages to convince her to turn over one of her weapons as she believes it is the only one Lynette has but she makes an unlikely friendship in Dr. Carol’s 26 year old son, Skye. Lynette gets Skye to agree to help her sneak back into her apartment and find out if anyone has accessed her computer to find out things about her but we already know that it is the therapist writing the book, so the reveal of the killer might be a big twist.'
As we approach the halfway mark in the novel, Lynette is running around trying to round up the other women to keep themselves and herself alive from whoever is coming after them. She ends up going to Marilyn’s where Heather is already hiding out and feeding her various addictions but Marilyn agrees to hear Lynette out. Lynette explains everything that has happened and they decide they need to get Michelle from the hospice first as they all owe that to Dani as she is currently in jail but this proves to be more difficult than they planned and Michelle dies shortly after they rescue her. However, they are in for a bigger betrayal and the police are after Heather and Lynette for questioning and potentially now Marilyn as well. After Michelle dies, Heather finds someone to stay with her body claiming she has phoned for an ambulance to pick up Michelle so they can escape. However, what she has actually done is called the police and the people looking for Lynette in order to save herself. Learning that Lynette was the one that wrote the book and that someone hacked her computer for the information without her knowing it and it led to the death of Adrienne and the situation they are all currently in but she is innocent because she wasn’t intending to publish the book and even stopped speaking to the reporter and publisher who she was working with because she knew what it would do to the other girls but Heather is under the impression that Lynette isn’t a final girl like the rest of them but just a mere survivor of a terrible situation. When someone tries to kill Lynette again she is being transferred for her safety and it is Garrett who is escorting her. Garrett and Lynette have a lot of history as he was a police officer that rescued her when Ricky killed her family and again when Billy came for her and her foster family and she fell in love with him despite him being married and having children. The pair began an affair when she was 18 and he was in his early 40s and this lasted for a long while before the pair grew apart. Lynette believing Garrett abandoned her relied only on herself and distanced herself from everyone. She has managed to figure out that Dr. Carol is behind everything and that she is working with someone called Chrissy, who seems to be a final girl that committed an act of betrayal none of the others could forgive, sleeping with her monster which is what they are accusing Lynette of even though she knows the first person she slept with was Garrett. Lynette believes that Garrett is going to kill her but he surprises her in telling her the information she has been looking for and gives her the opportunity to escape and confront Chrissy once and for all and she realises that he has saved her again and it seems like she might still hold some affection for Garrett that she has been denying for years because of a misunderstanding and miscommunication between them.
The first thing Lynette does is head to pick up Stephanie, the newest final girl as she believes that Stephanie is also a target and essentially kidnaps her although Stephanie is willing. Together they track down and lure out Chrissy in order to figure out what is going on. When it comes to the final confrontation, Lynette goes in alone and learns from Chrissy that the others were right about Lynette not being a final girl. The person behind everything is killing off the final girls to make Lynette the final girl of final girls to end the cycle once and for all. It seems that her intuition was correct about Dr. Carol being behind it all and the final showdown is going to be between her and Lynette meaning she has already got to the others and Chrissy’s henchman, Keith has caught Stephanie and Lynette might have to bear witness to her death if she doesn’t think of something quickly. The final section of the novel brings in a few twists and a lot of red herrings but the end result was very interesting to witness. While I really enjoyed where Lynette went as a character I would have liked to have seen more of her living after the events of the novel, potentially with reigniting her relationship with Garrett or meeting someone new or something more substantial than what we got. Overall, I did enjoy The Final Girl Support Group more than The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires but I still haven’t found my five star read by Grady Hendrix yet but I’ve still got a few books to go through.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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