The Final Girl Support Group

Rating: 4.5/5 Final Girls

“Dying isn’t the important thing. It’s nothing more than the punctuation mark on the end of your life. It’s everything that came before that matters. Punctuation marks, most people skip right over them. They don’t even have a sound.”

– Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group, p. 326

Final girls: They’re the heroes of horror movies who survive and stop the killer. But what happens to them after the credits roll?

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix answers that question and explores the trauma final girls experience. It focuses on Lynette Tarkington, a member of a final girl support group, who lives her life in fear of being murdered. She takes ridiculously complicated routes to go places, she rarely leaves home, and her only real friend is a plant. But her way of living doesn’t seem so paranoid when someone in the support group misses a meeting. Lynette suspects someone is after her and the other members of the support group. Can her survival skills save the rest of the women in the group and herself, or will everyone think she’s paranoid?

The Final Girl Support Group is a fun, fast-paced story with a lot of heart. Hendrix gives backstory in a way that reveals a lot about Lynette but keeps the story action-filled and murder-ey. 

The relationships among women in this book are well written and essential to the plot. The exploration of these complex relationships is so nuanced and true to life. (And a lot of it passes the Bechdel test!) Hendrix doesn’t write perfect characters; they, like real humans, are flawed, make mistakes, and do dumb things. It’s this imperfection that makes the characters in The Final Girl Support Group so realistic.

The Final Girl Support Group is also a must-read because, though it is a slasher-type story, it isn’t about the killer; it’s about the victims and the people who fight back against the killer. It centers the victims and doesn’t glorify the killers. It’s full of compassion, forgiveness, and friendship.

Fans of horror movies, final girls, or Grady Hendrix need to read The Final Girl Support Group.