Book Review: The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix
Could you imagine if a lot of final girls got together and talked about their problems? No? Well, now I can. In my The Final Girl Support Group review, you get to read about just how messed up these poor girls are and what they’re willing to do to protect themselves. Get ready for a thrill ride.
Book Information
Lynnette Tarkington is a final girl. She survived a horrible massacre that left her boyfriend, parents, and little sister dead. Now, though, as a middle-aged woman afraid to leave her own apartment, Lynnette isn’t sure what it truly means to survive if she’s not hiding. Going to the support group for other final girls is her only outing. When someone starts targeting the final girls, though, Lynnette must rise to the task and finally slay the monsters that she’s always been so afraid of before they get the chance to kill her and the other final girls once and for all.
Review | Heidi Dischler
Wow. That was a rollercoaster. Sometimes really really good. Other times, not so much. Lynnette was a very unlikeable character to me. She was whiny. Weak. Had absolutely no personality. But man, did she have a lot of character growth. That is one of the best qualities of this book, I think, is the character arc of Lynnette. She grew so much as a character and it was believable and palpable.
The plot in the beginning felt very slow and dragged on quite a bit. If it wasn’t for the cool premise of this book, I think I would’ve probably stopped reading it, but I trudged through that first part and I’m glad I did because it got much better from there. The whole book after those first long first chapters is amazing. It was fast-paced and thrilling but man was it hard to get past that first part.
Spoilers ahead.
So, one of the things that really through me for a loop was all of the “reveals” that this book had. I put that in quotes because it felt like I was being pulled in so many different directions. Lynnette is a terrible narrator and for the longest time, I thought she was an unreliable narrator and was going to end up being the character. That’s how unlikeable she was. But after Lynnette being convinced that it was Dr. Carol, Chrissy, Dr. Carol again, then her son, then Stephanie, and then both Stephanie and Skye. It just felt very unorganized to be honest and it shows in the plot.
Overall, though, I enjoyed the latter half of this book. Lynnette’s character development was probably my favorite part. I’m most excited about this being adapted for the screen, though, because I think it’ll translate over better than it did through a novel. It feels blasphemous even writing that, but, hey, some things are just better as movies.
Source: Overdrive Audiobook from Public Library
