The Final Girl Support Group

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The Final Girl Support Group

by
Grady Hendrix

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

Title:	The Final Girl Support Group
Author:	Grady Hendrix
Genre:	Novel
Written:	2021
Length:	339 pages
Availability:	The Final Girl Support Group - US
	The Final Girl Support Group - UK
	The Final Girl Support Group - Canada
	Gruppo sostegno ragazze sopravvissute - Italia
	Grupo de apoyo para final girls - España

	from: Bookshop.org (US)

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Our Assessment:

B : fun premise and decent suspense, if all a bit too cinematically hectic

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries
Source	Rating	Date	Reviewer
The Guardian	.	13/8/2021	Lisa Tuttle
The NY Times Book Rev.	.	6/6/2021	Danielle Trussoni
USA Today	B+	13/7/2021	Barbara VanDenburgh

From the Reviews:

"Hendrix’s cinematic knowledge is deployed with skill, and it’s not necessary to be a fan of slasher movies to enjoy this very clever, gleefully violent, self-aware deconstruction of the genre" - Lisa Tuttle, The Guardian

"That sense of collective female triumph is what makes Grady Hendrix’s new novel, The Final Girl Support Group (...) such a great read. (...) Though the final girls’ plight has all the scares of great horror fiction, there is an element of truth in their situation that will be recognizable to anyone who has experienced real trauma." - Danielle Trussoni, The New York Times Book Review

"Steeped in tropes of ‘70s and ‘80s slasher cinema and paying tribute to the young women who survived slaughter onscreen, Final Girl indulges but doesn’t coast on nostalgia, and is itself a page-turning thriller with survival on the line. (...) While itself a wickedly entertaining page-turner that indulges readers’ appetites for slashers, Final Girl also smartly psychoanalyzes it." - Barbara VanDenburgh, USA Today

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       The Final Girl Support Group is narrated by Lynnette Tarkington, one of the 'final girls' of the title. A 'final girl' is the one who survives, the one who, against all odds, ends the spree the crazed killer has gone on -- familiar especially from slasher movies. But Lynnette and the others in her group are real 'final girls' -- the films and sequels based on their real-life stories. (Lynnette is, as she is sometimes reminded, not a true final girl -- she survived a brutal attack, but she wasn't the one to confront and take down the killer.)
       Lynnette notes early on that: "we were creatures of the eighties and the world has moved on" -- but the final girls only have to some extent (that's why they still get together in a support group run by Dr. Carol Elliott, as they have for sixteen years), and others haven't forgotten either, including some of the surviving incarcerated killers. Others, too, perhaps: at the beginning of the novel there's just been a mass-killing -- "six Camp Red Lake counselors who were shutting the place down for the season" -- , with sixteen-year-old -- and now bona fide final girl -- Stephanie Fugate apparently just managing to avoid becoming the seventh victim, getting the better of the killer. The killing is noteworthy not least because it is a near-repeat of what happened to one of the final girls who is in the group with Lynnette, Adrienne Butler, who, after her ordeal, had eventually bought Camp Red Lake and: "turned it into a retreat for victims of violence, mostly survivors of school shootings and kids who got away from their kidnappers".
       The six who regularly meet with Dr.Carol -- a seventh, Chrissy, is considered: "a traitor, a masochist, a turn-coat, a liar. She's got Stockholm syndrome", collecting and trading 'murderabilia', mementos from the crimes and the killers -- all have dealt with their trauma in different ways, Lynnette summing up:

Dani became self-sufficient, Adrienne got into self-help, Marilyn married up and buried her head in the sand, Hether got high, Julia went activist. Me ? I learned how to protect myself.

       Lynnette is extremely safety-conscious -- paranoid, basically -- taking incredible steps to make sure she is not being followed, and having turned her apartment into a secure sort of fortress which she barely ever dares leave.
       As Lynnette explains: "The things that happened to us never end" -- and now it's not only the old trauma and the ongoing concerns they have to deal with, but a whole new threat, as the quickly unfolding events sure look like someone is hunting down these final girls.
       Lynnette is very clear about the (always) immediate dangers when she speaks to recent survivor Stephanie Fugate and her parents and counters dad's reässurances that it's all:

     "Nothing, sweetie," Ken says, putting one big, calming dad hand on her shoulder. "You're absolutely one hundred percent safe here."
     "Your father is trying to reassure you," I say, making eye contact, my hand on her other shoulder. "In reality, you could be murdered at any moment by a deranged lunatic who kills final girls."
     "I'm a final girl ?" she says in a high voice.
     "You're not a final girl," her mother says.
     "Yes," I say. "You are a final girl."

       Lynnette also realizes that whoever has started on this new spree has inside knowledge of the group, knowing things that only the intimate circle of six, plus Dr.Carol, could know about. She realizes, too: "They knew because they read it in a book", as one of the members of this group has documented it all -- and, indeed,, they all get a copy of the manuscript that reveals all their dark secrets .....
       Lynnette's instincts -- of survival -- are to flee, and she does. But she's also determined to figure out who is behind all this and put a stop to it -- and, along the way, she grabs Stephanie, taking her along for the ride because she thinks she is the only one who can keep the girl safe.
       All the final girls understandably have trust-issues, and one of the difficulties Lynnette faces is getting people to believe or at least listen to her, as even the other group members come to have good reason to turn away from her. Yet she also gets some help from somewhat unexpected sources.
       As one of the other group members bluntly tells her: "Lynnette, your people skills are shit", and that proves something of a problem as Lynnette tries desperately to keep the other final girls from getting killed -- and from becoming the final girl of the final girl herself ..... Rushing along, she also jumps to some too-quick conclusions, with snowballing effect. As one might expect, things get very messy (and quite bloody).
       The Final Girl Support Group makes for decent slasher-film-type suspense -- just missing the creepy music -- and it should make for an entertaining scary movie. As fiction, it's a bit too hectic, the near-constant frantic rush limiting exposition, with Lynnette's perspective rather narrow (and focused on what's ahead, though without always sharing what she's thinking with the reader). One-page documentary-type bits interspersed between the chapters -- different types of reactions to, commentary on, and evidence from various 'final girl'-events -- at least shed some additional light on the phenomena (including that of the widespread-obsession with both perpetrators and victims).
       Hendrix both pays homage to the genre and pokes fun at it. He offers some decent twists to the story -- including who is behind the killings (though without really exploring motivation sufficiently) -- and it reads easily and quickly enough. Still, he doesn't take anywhere near full advantage of the possibilities of the written form in presenting the story; it's already too much simply like the film version will be -- and it looks like it will work better on the screen.

- M.A.Orthofer, 11 August 2025

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Links:

The Final Girl Support Group:

Berkley publicity page
Titan Books publicity page
Mondadori publicity page
Booket publicity page
Q & A at the Southern Review of Books
Q & A at Rolling Stone
Q & A at AIPT

Reviews:

Grady Hendrix:

Official site

Other books by Grady Hendrix under review:

Paperbacks from Hell

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of Mysteries and Thrillers
See Index of Contemporary American fiction

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About the Author:

Grady Hendrix is an American author.

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