Final Girls Support Group - Grady Hendrix (Replay)

Horror/Thriller

Rating: 9/10

With my pending post on Thursday of one of my favourite horror novels of 2022, I thought a repost of one of my favourites of 2021 was in order. You’re welcome.

Take slasher movie adoration, wicked satire, flawed characters, full tilt plot twists and what do you get?  A fiendishly good book that grabs you by the throat and won’t let go until it’s good and ready. And trust me when I tell you, you won’t want it to!

The Final Girls, for those of you less well-versed in the horror genre, are the ones left standing as the credits roll at the end of a slasher film.  She fought back, outran, or otherwise defeated the killer, often avenging her dead friends.  Because there are always dead friends. Usually, a veritable slew of them.

This book opens at the latest therapy session of a group final girls, each with a different story of serial murder that brought them there. Then one of them misses a meeting and soon it’s revealed that all their deepest fears, born of the stuff of nightmares, are being laid out for all to see in a tell all book.  Where can they hide?  Where will they be safe?   

The reader is left to ponder which of these final girls will make it through another massacre as they are dragged, kicking and screaming, back into the fray.

Lynnette is our main character and her sheer terror of every waking moment in the day will leave the reader gasping for breath. She is compelled to assess the threat level of every environment and question everyone’s motives. When the fortress she has built around herself is smashed to pieces, you worry for her.  But as the author pummels her with obstacles you realize that you might not need to, she is after all a final girl.

Grady Hendrix has written about a retail store gone to hell, the souls of a heavy metal band in peril, a bloody book club with a bite and the demonic temperament of teenagers.  In every way imaginable, and many not, he pays a homage to a love of the horror genre with a clever dissection of the schlock, the cliches and the tropes.  And I, for one, am glad of it!

P.S. A delightful authorly flourish is that each of these final girls can be traced back to a cinematic series if you pay close enough attention.

Book Pairing(s): Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix, Hold Me Closer, Necromancer by Lish McBride, Practical Demon Keeping by Christopher Moore