The Final Girl Support Group
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
VOTED GOODREADS CHOICE AWARD BEST HORROR NOVEL OF 2021
A Good Morning America Buzz Pick
“The horror master…puts his unique spin on slasher movie tropes.”-USA Today
A can't-miss summer read, selected by The New York Times, Oprah Daily, Time, USA Today, The Philadelphia Inquirer, CNN, LitHub, BookRiot, Bustle, Popsugar and the New York Public Library
In horror movies, the final girls are the ones left standing when the credits roll. They made it through the worst night of their lives…but what happens after?
Like his bestselling novel The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, Grady Hendrix’s latest is a fast-paced, frightening, and wickedly humorous thriller. From chain saws to summer camp slayers, The Final Girl Support Group pays tribute to and slyly subverts our most popular horror films—movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Scream.
Lynnette Tarkington is a real-life final girl who survived a massacre. For more than a decade, she’s been meeting with five other final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, working to put their lives back together. Then one woman misses a meeting, and their worst fears are realized—someone knows about the group and is determined to rip their lives apart again, piece by piece.
But the thing about final girls is that no matter how bad the odds, how dark the night, how sharp the knife, they will never, ever give up.
VOTED GOODREADS CHOICE AWARD BEST HORROR NOVEL OF 2021
A Good Morning America Buzz Pick
“The horror master…puts his unique spin on slasher movie tropes.”-USA Today
A can't-miss summer read, selected by The New York Times, Oprah Daily, Time, USA Today, The Philadelphia Inquirer, CNN, LitHub, BookRiot, Bustle, Popsugar and the New York Public Library
In horror movies, the final girls are the ones left standing when the credits roll. They made it through the worst night of their lives…but what happens after?
Like his bestselling novel The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, Grady Hendrix’s latest is a fast-paced, frightening, and wickedly humorous thriller. From chain saws to summer camp slayers, The Final Girl Support Group pays tribute to and slyly subverts our most popular horror films—movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Scream.
Lynnette Tarkington is a real-life final girl who survived a massacre. For more than a decade, she’s been meeting with five other final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, working to put their lives back together. Then one woman misses a meeting, and their worst fears are realized—someone knows about the group and is determined to rip their lives apart again, piece by piece.
But the thing about final girls is that no matter how bad the odds, how dark the night, how sharp the knife, they will never, ever give up.
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Community Reviews
What Bookclubbers are saying about this book
✨ Summarized by Bookclubs AI
Readers say *The Final Girl Support Group* by Grady Hendrix offers a compelling take on the final girl trope, focusing on trauma, recovery, and their ...
Originally reviewed on Cyn's Workshop
I absolutely loved every moment of The Final Girl Support Group, as a huge fan of Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, and Halloween, the way Hendrix honors those was brilliant and entertaining.
Gripping Story
The Final Girl Support Group follows Lynette, a final girl who survived the murder of her family, impaled on the wall above as the murderer killed and butchered her mother, father, and little sister. Haunted by that night for years, she joined the “Final Girl” support group, a group of other women who survived serial killers, leading the media to call them the “Final Girls.”
Hendrix does a fantastic job of paying homage to the classics, bringing in and reinventing some of those scenes to draw in fans.
My favorite part is the Scream reference and the way the Stab movies made it into the book as well! Those small nods to slashers brought this novel to life.
Hendrix uses those classic slasher tropes to build this novel up. He goes from one scene to another without losing momentum, and you’re drawn in just like you would be drawn in watching a movie. Lynette is, you know, haunted by her past. She’s haunted by this idea that she’s not a final girl because she played possum.
However, Lynette proves her point here. She is proving that there is someone out to get her and all the “Final Girls,” and it’s not just paranoia. She’s learning to become the hero she’s learning, still dealing with the trauma of such a traumatic event, watching her entire family and her little sister butchered.
You’re seeing the psychological effects of what it means to be a final girl. And you’re seeing it through all these different characters. Hendrix took our classic movies, those slasher favorites, and gave those final girls a new life. He shows you what comes after the movie ends and how these women cope. But he’s also showing the insanity of being obsessed with final girls and how it can drive people to do insanely bizarre things.
I just absolutely loved the storytelling here. I loved the momentum, the pacing the character grows with Lynette, and the way Hendrix has created his own final girl with this novel.
Final Thoughts
The Final Girl Support is an absolutely fantastic novel. I love the humanity that Hendrix imbues the characters with; the relatability of these women makes them jump off the pages. Hendrix did a phenomenal job of grounding this novel into reality while paying homage to classic flashers and making them real.
See more reviews at Cyn's Workshop and follow me on Facebook | Instagram | TikTok | Twitter | Tumblr | Spotify Podcast | YouTube | BookBub | Goodreads+ | LinkedIn
Honestly, this is an amazing novel, and I think everyone must read it.
A delightfully entertaining horror novel, The Final Girl Support Group will make all fans of classic slashers giddy with happiness.
I absolutely loved every moment of The Final Girl Support Group, as a huge fan of Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, and Halloween, the way Hendrix honors those was brilliant and entertaining.
Gripping Story
The Final Girl Support Group follows Lynette, a final girl who survived the murder of her family, impaled on the wall above as the murderer killed and butchered her mother, father, and little sister. Haunted by that night for years, she joined the “Final Girl” support group, a group of other women who survived serial killers, leading the media to call them the “Final Girls.”
Hendrix does a fantastic job of paying homage to the classics, bringing in and reinventing some of those scenes to draw in fans.
My favorite part is the Scream reference and the way the Stab movies made it into the book as well! Those small nods to slashers brought this novel to life.
Hendrix uses those classic slasher tropes to build this novel up. He goes from one scene to another without losing momentum, and you’re drawn in just like you would be drawn in watching a movie. Lynette is, you know, haunted by her past. She’s haunted by this idea that she’s not a final girl because she played possum.
However, Lynette proves her point here. She is proving that there is someone out to get her and all the “Final Girls,” and it’s not just paranoia. She’s learning to become the hero she’s learning, still dealing with the trauma of such a traumatic event, watching her entire family and her little sister butchered.
You’re seeing the psychological effects of what it means to be a final girl. And you’re seeing it through all these different characters. Hendrix took our classic movies, those slasher favorites, and gave those final girls a new life. He shows you what comes after the movie ends and how these women cope. But he’s also showing the insanity of being obsessed with final girls and how it can drive people to do insanely bizarre things.
I just absolutely loved the storytelling here. I loved the momentum, the pacing the character grows with Lynette, and the way Hendrix has created his own final girl with this novel.
Final Thoughts
The Final Girl Support is an absolutely fantastic novel. I love the humanity that Hendrix imbues the characters with; the relatability of these women makes them jump off the pages. Hendrix did a phenomenal job of grounding this novel into reality while paying homage to classic flashers and making them real.
See more reviews at Cyn's Workshop and follow me on Facebook | Instagram | TikTok | Twitter | Tumblr | Spotify Podcast | YouTube | BookBub | Goodreads+ | LinkedIn
Honestly, this is an amazing novel, and I think everyone must read it.
The Final Girl Support Group takes the familiar slasher formula and asks a much more interesting question. What happens to the final girls after they survive? Grady Hendrix brings six massacre survivors together in group therapy. Then, he sends them running again after someone begins targeting the women who were supposed to have already survived their killer.
Lynnette Tarkington has built her entire life around staying alive. Her apartment is fortified, her routines are calculated, and danger is always on her mind. The other women in her support group have responded to their trauma differently, but each carries the aftermath of becoming famous for the worst night of her life. Their uneasy bond becomes vital after another final girl is murdered and Lynnette becomes convinced someone is hunting them.
The recovery aspect fascinated me more than the slasher mystery itself. Horror movies usually stop once the final girl escapes. Hendrix looks at everything that comes afterward. These women survived horrific violence, but survival did not magically remove their trauma. They are paranoid, angry, exhausted, defensive, addicted, grieving, and still trying to build lives beyond what happened to them. Watching them support each other while facing another threat gave the final girl trope so much more to chew on.
I read the killer as a metaphor for trauma consuming the life that comes after survival. The women become strongest when they stop trying to survive alone. Group therapy, friendship, community, and connection become part of the fight. Their trauma has shaped them, but it does not have to control everything that comes next. I loved seeing these strong women discover that relying on each other did not make them weaker survivors.
Grady Hendrix packs so much into a relatively short thriller. The book explores trauma, recovery, victims and predators, group therapy, slasher horror fandom, exploitation, strong female friendships, and our cultural obsession with turning real violence into entertainment. The slasher references make the book fun for horror fans. While the deeper trauma recovery themes give you plenty to discuss after the blood dries. This is my second Grady Hendrix novel. His writing really clicks with me. I am impressed by how much meaning he can layer beneath horror that is still entertaining, bloody, and unmistakably a love letter to final girls.
I enjoyed “The Final Girl Support Group,” though I wasn’t riveted - and I certainly wasn’t terrified, or even mildly frightened. Despite its slasher film roots, it was more suspenseful, rather than horrifying. I enjoyed Grady Hendrix’s style of writing, but found myself questioning the rules of the world he created. I liked (didn’t love) the main protagonist, but appreciated her arch from isolated, paranoid, obsessive-compulsive shut-in to selfless, resilient protector. Sidebar observation about resilience, though - I found the “final girls” to be almost unrealistically resilient, shrugging off or powering through a slew of crippling injuries. Overall, this was a quick and enjoyable Halloween read, despite being light on actual scares.
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