Subterranean Press and NetGalley provided me with an electronic copy of Final Girls. This is my honest opinion of the book.

Kim and Diana are running for their lives after witnessing an unspeakable set of horrors unleashed upon their parents. These formerly estranged sisters are taking part in an experiment that studies the fear response and treats it using a therapy similar to regression therapy. Using hypnotic suggestion coupled with a drug cocktail, the therapy includes virtual reality to simulate the real feeling scenarios. Dr. Jennifer Webb, in an attempt to garner good will with the media, has invited Esther Hoffman, a reporter for Science Digest, to get an unvarnished look at the facility and the program. When Esther gets talked into a real demonstration of the techniques, will she be making the biggest mistake of her life?

When an attempt by Dr. Webb to convince Esther of the program's efficacy is threatened by an unknown source, the story goes off the rails for me. The book is simply too short and the author does not bring in enough of the second plot line to make the novel feel complete. With more detail and some editing, Final Girls would definitely have promise.

Firstly, I'll say that I really really like Mira Grant's Newsflesh trilogy - it's so darn cool.

I got about halfway through this one and alas my file expired - but the half that I did read was super cool and now I must finish it!

Mira is really good at creepy, goosepimple inducing horror. And the concept behind this book is intriguing and refreshing. I will write a more in-depth review once I've finished it!

Final Girls by Mira Grant is a science fiction horror novella from the Seanan McGuire pseudonym that brought us the Newsflesh and Parasitology series. It's not set in either of those universes, however, and in my opinion is a bit more firmly rooted in the horror genre than either.

What if you could fix the worst parts of yourself by confronting your worst fears?

Dr. Jennifer Webb has invented proprietary virtual reality technology that purports to heal psychological wounds by running clients through scenarios straight out of horror movies and nightmares. In a carefully controlled environment, with a medical cocktail running through their veins, sisters might develop a bond they’ve been missing their whole lives—while running from the bogeyman through a simulated forest. But…can real change come so easily?

Esther Hoffman doubts it. Esther has spent her entire journalism career debunking pseudoscience, after phony regression therapy ruined her father’s life. She’s determined to unearth the truth about Dr. Webb’s budding company. Dr. Webb’s willing to let her, of course, for reasons of her own. What better advertisement could she get than that of a convinced skeptic? But Esther’s not the only one curious about how this technology works. Enter real-world threats just as frightening as those created in the lab. Dr. Webb and Esther are at odds, but they may also be each other’s only hope of survival.

As described in the blurb, the story of Final Girls follows Esther, a reporter who is covering a radical new psychological (/psychiatric since there are drugs involved?) therapy using an advanced form of virtual reality — so advanced, it incidentally includes the ability for outsiders to look at people's dreams while they're in the system. Esther has been chosen for the job because of a past that makes her especially sceptical of the lofty claims made by Dr Webb's organisation. Dr Webb, meanwhile, just wants to convince her of the efficacy of the system, using whatever means necessary. Things fall into horror when outside forces throw carefully laid plans awry.

This isn't a lengthy read but it is a very tense and interesting one. Midway through the book I was honestly unsure whether our protagonists would survive the ordeal and was wondering how the story would end. The fact that the reader is given more information than some of the characters — who have no way of knowing what's happening outside of the virtual reality — significantly adds to the tension. About half the story takes place in a virtual world and those scenes are easily differentiated from the real world scenes through the use of a different font, making the delineations quite clear.

Final Girls was an excellent read and I recommend it to fans of science fiction and horror. Being a novella it's also a quick read but one that will not leave you disappointed. I look forward to reading more of Mira Grant's work in the future.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: late April 2017, Subterranean Press
Series: No
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via Netgalley

Dr. Webb has come up with new VR technology that can cure phobias, mend relationships, etc. Patients are placed in a pod and drift into a drug induced sleep. She puts them through horror movie type scenarios. Journalist Esther Hoffman is sent to interview Dr. Webb, and test out this new form of therapy for herself. There are also those who want the technology for themselves, and are willing to kill for it. This was a pretty good short. Not what I was expecting, but still good.

3.5 stars, rounded up because it was too good to round down

Coupled with a drug cocktail, a new type of virtual reality is helping people to heal emotional wounds by making them work through dream (and nightmare) scenarios. A skeptical journalist goes under with the doctor behind it, and things get spookier than they should when real-life problems arise.
I don't really read horror, nor do I watch much horror. What I do like, though, are playing horror games, and my first thought upon reading the premise of this one on NetGalley was "That would make a great video game!" And it would. I would play the heck out of this game.

It was a quick read, and the story was pretty solid despite its brevity - it's about 100 pages and some change, I think. I wasn't always wild about the dialogue (can't put my finger on WHY, unfortunately), and bits about the SPOILERcorporate spy/assassinEND SPOILER backstory slowed the story down a bit too much for my liking, but the narration was compelling, and had a lyrical quality to it that I quite enjoyed. It was generally fun, and I wish there had been more of it, particularly the spooky bits; they happened a little too late in the story, to be honest, but I am content with what we got all the same. Also! All of our major players are women. It is all ladies all the time, and I am all about that.

I have to say - and this does not influence my rating, at least not by much- that I can't help feeling that the proposed $40 price tag is a bit steep, especially for a book this short. (The only book I would pay that much for would have to have "Harry Potter" in the title, and even then I wouldn't be thrilled about it.) I do not mean to undervalue art - and this IS art; art has value, and it should be treated as such, with pricing that is fair to the artist. That said...$40 can be a lot for those of us ballin' on a budget. Good news, though: the retailer pre-order price seems to be less than $25 at the moment, and the ebook price is a very fair $5, so you can treat yourself AND still buy your friend a birthday gift.

A big "thank you" to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an egalley in exchange for an honest review!

Mira Grant didn't invent the zombie story, nor did she re-popularize it (I'd give Max Brooks the credit for that), but I think no one writes in the genre better than she. Grant also incorporates technology into her fiction as well, if not better, than most. And <em>Final Girls</em>, a novella, exemplifies both of these talents.

Jennifer Webb is a doctor who has invented a technology to heal psychological wounds. It does so by putting a patient through a series of horrific encounters in a carefully controlled environment. But as with a lot of new technology, there are doubters. One doubter is Esther Hoffman, a science reporter for a reputable science magazine.

Esther agrees to be put through the new technology, but based on her history of failed therapy, she doesn't have high hopes for this new process.

The book is short so it's hard to say too much without giving the story away. Trust that Grant takes the reader on an extraordinary journey that will both scare you and have you feeling good about mankind. In fact, I think that this is part of what makes me keep coming back to Grant's work. Despite the terrors and the complex technology, it still comes down to humanity and at the core, we're still a capable and loving people, which is what she shows us.

As with her other works, Grant manages to sneak in some new ideas that will certainly become common tropes as other writers pick up on the ideas. I don't want to spoil it for anyone ... read the book and discover it all for yourself!

Looking for a good book? Mira Grant continues to shine and provide strong writing, humanity among future horrors, and technology on the edge of transforming mankind in her novella <em>Final Girls</em>.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

If you are a Mira Grant fan, you will be happy with this book. The horror will remind some of the Feed series, and the technology is reminiscent of the Parasitology series. Unfortunately, the character-building isn't as deep as the former, and the technology isn't as well laid-out as the latter, but I think that's more a limitation of the novella format than any failing of Mira Grant's writing. Anything she writes is a "must read" for me, and Final Girls did not disappoint. The virtual reality-based therapy described in the book felt timely, and Grant's excellent writing made it feel like something that could believably exist in the near future. Would you change your memories if it meant healing some of your worst emotional scars? Is it still brain-washing if you knowingly consent? Are the risks of such a therapy worth it? Do we really want a world where people can just white-wash away bad experiences? And what might happen when such a technology falls into the wrong hands? I love a book that makes me think, and my only complaint about this one is that it wasn't longer!

Note: I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley

I couldn't put this down, but then the ending happened and I wanted to throw it across the room and couldn't because I read on a Nook. It was fine, I guess, but not at all what I thought it was going to be. Unpredictable can be a good quality in a story, but this one is unpredictable in a way that I hated.

I loved the concept, but the execution just wasn't there. Mira Grant seems to be phoning it in lately. I've not been happy with her last few stories. Maybe she's giving all the good stuff to Seananne McGuire! In the end, it really doesn't matter. Everyone has their off seasons. I'll still be here, eagerly awaiting the next Mira Grant book. My thanks, to Netgalley and Subterranean Press.

This is a novella by Mira Grant (Seanan McGuire) that deals with technology, psychology, and a dash of horror. It's a quick read that presents some interesting ideas. If you're a fan of the author, I think you'll like it, but due to the price ($40 for the limited edition), I believe casual fans might be better served by starting someplace else in her vast library.

The horror genre can be a brilliant form of catharsis, both as a reader and a writer, and a basic way to engage our emotional centers. Horror scares us and it excites us, often while reflecting on societal fears, and can sometimes even make couples feel closer together (look up Dolf Zilmann's Snuggle Theory). But can it cure us? Can horror repair long-standing psychological issues, or fix broken inter-personal relationships? This latter scenario is the focus behind Mira Grant's latest novella, Final Girls.

Dr. Jennifer Webb has developed a next-gen system of therapy, using a potent combination of virtual reality, psychotropics, horror scenarios, and lucid dreaming. Her patient, Esther, a reporter sent to debunk Webb's work, is traumatized by a childhood scandal that ended with her innocent father murdered in prison. In order to present a well-rounded report on Webb's work for the pop-sci mag she works for, Esther will have to undergo a scary bit of therapy.

Mira Grant (pseudonym for Seanan McGuire) approaches horror much like Webb, delivering cutting-edge concepts coupled with scares (her Newsfeed series was a terrific and multi-layered combination of politics, science, and zombies). Final Girls is certainly a more cerebral dash of horror than an emotional one, and it's certainly a fun and easy enough read, but one that carries with it a sort of double-edged sword.

This is a fun novella, and I enjoyed the few hours spent reading it. However, it's brevity doesn't do the characters any real favors. I liked the whipsmart concept at play here, but I never felt truly engaged on an emotional level. There weren't any true surprises for me to gush over, although the overall, long-lasting impact of Webb's treatment on its patients is certainly worth savoring. While there's a rich vein of darkness running throughout, there's nothing particularly potent or memorable action-wise, and the characters are pretty thin. There just wasn't enough for me to latch on to in the personalities of either Esther or Webb, or the malevolent third parties seeking to undo the both of them.

Bottom line: this is a coolly executed bit of fun, but certainly one of Grant's more minor, shallower works.

[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.]

“THE WOOD is dark and the wood is deep…”

“…and the trees claw at the sky with branches like bones, ripping holes in the canopy of clouds, revealing glimpses of a distant, rotting moon the color of dead flesh.”

Esther Hoffman is a popular science writer who’s spent most of her career debunking pseudoscience. After all, she owes it to her dad, a widower who was falsely accused of kidnapping and child abuse when she was just fifteen. Benjamin was eventually exonerated, but not before he was murdered in prison.

Esther’s latest target is Dr. Jennifer Webb, founder of the Webb Virtual Therapy Institute and all-around mad scientist. Her proprietary technology – which includes virtual reality pods, a potent cocktail of mind-altering drugs, and computer simulations pulled straight from the brain of Stephen King – is being marketed as a new and radical form of therapy. Siblings who don’t very much care for each other can run through Webb’s B-movie gauntlet and emerge on the other side closer than ever, with a bond newly forged on the conquered remains of slashers or zombies or witches – take your pick!

Esther sees this as nothing more than a high tech version of regression therapy – the source of those so-called “repressed memories” that destroyed her father – but Dr. Webb disagrees. And what better way to legitimize her work than by winning over her harshest critic?

But things go from predictably bad to bloody worse when …. nope, never mind. The less I say about FINAL GIRLS, the better, because so much of the enjoyment is wrapped up in the surprise.

This is a Mira Grant joint, through and through. What FINAL GIRLS is lacking in killer mermaids, it more than makes up for in chillingly beautiful prose; intelligence and humor and wit; twists like whoah; and, of course, queer girls (yay!). This is a smart and self-aware take on the horror genre, yet the scifi element tethers it firmly to reality. Virtual reality pods aren’t so terribly difficult to imagine – nor is the inevitable corporate/military-industrial battle to use them in the service of harm vs. good.

The story is equally tense and imaginative, and I was left guessing ’til the very end. It almost reminds me of THE CABIN IN THE WOODS, just a bit, in the way it turns a familiar trope on its head, cackling all the while. Like kissing in a rainstorm. A rainstorm made of blood … and maybe a few stray bits of viscera, just for extra effect.

A strong 4 1/2 stars. I could have connected with the characters a little more strongly, but overall this is a minor complaint.

Also, mermaids.

** Full disclosure: I received a free electronic ARC for review through NetGalley. **

I received this book free from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Written by Mira Grant, and published by Subterranean Press, this novella is best classified as a combination of science fiction, fantasy, and horror (zombies). If I had known about the zombies, I probably would not have read the book because I hate zombie stories (movies, TV shows, etc.). The book begins as horror, but then rapidly transforms into science fiction before turning back to horror.

The story is about a revolutionary new type of psychiatric treatment that involves the use of a proprietary form of virtual reality (VR) that enables doctors and technicians to plant dreams into the minds of their patients, and to see those dreams on computer screens. The dreams can be manipulated, and the effects on patients can be lasting. Unfortunately, many unscrupulous agents of government(s) would dearly like to get their hands on this technology for propaganda and “brain washing” purposes. So far, its inventor, Dr. Jennifer Webb, has been able to keep this dangerous technology away from those who would misuse it, but that could change very soon.

Esther Hoffman is an investigative journalist for <i>Science Digest.</i> When she was fifteen years old, Esther’s father had died after being accused of unspeakable crimes against children — children who had been manipulated by unprincipled psychologists who claimed to be able to retrieve “repressed” memories from their minds. Esther becomes obsessed with her father’s death because she had been unable to prevent it. She is driven to investigate those who treat diseases of the mind. She is granted access to Dr. Webb’s laboratory, and to two of the doctor’s patients who had been treated successfully. Unbelievably, the good doctor has met one of her first patients at a Horror Con show where she was presenting a scientific paper on her new techniques. Really? That’s where doctors find their patients? That’s where they present their scientific discoveries to the scientific community? Wow! In any case, as a part of her investigation, Esther takes Dr. Webb up on an offer to try the VR treatment herself so she can see that it is harmless. Things don’t go as planned, and that’s where the zombies come in.

Some of the sentence structure, and some of the organization of the story, could be a bit better. I thought that restructuring some of the sentences and paragraphs would make the flow of reading a little smoother and easier. In addition, some of the dialogue is stilted and unrealistic. The author uses the device of changing tense to describe the portions of the story that are supposed to be in the VR, using past tense for the bulk of the story, but present tense for the VR part. This didn’t work for me. I found it confusing, and I noticed at least one place where both tenses were used in the same sentence.

This story has potential. It could easily be stretched into a full-length novel if the zombies were eliminated and more focus were to be placed on the attempts by unscrupulous governmental agents to gain access to a dangerous new technology. This could easily be transformed into a straight sci-fi thriller, IMO.

The ending of the story seemed abrupt, and left me vaguely unsatisfied. Although all loose ends were tied up, it wasn’t at all clear to me what might happen next in the lives of the two women: Dr. Webb and Esther Hoffman. It is a short, easy read, and was sufficiently engaging and entertaining that I awarded it two stars out of a possible five.

I'm so behind on my ARC reviews, guys. Another by-product of the cold that won't quit. But I want to tell you about all this stuff, even if it's no longer in advance!

Seanan McGuire produces novellas at a thrilling rate, and I've been digging novellas lately. I got Final Girls by Mira Grant (McGuire's more horror-ish pen name) from Netgalley for review recently after reading and loving Every Heart a Doorway.

The premise is the real draw here, and I think it kind of stands in for my feelings about the whole book. Esther is a skeptical reporter who's doing an investigation of a new type of therapy. This therapy, invented by Dr. Jennifer Webb, involves a complete virtual reality simulation of a novel trauma experience--basically, you get into a VR tank and have a completely convincing experience of living through a horror movie. It seems like mostly the therapy is being used to heal very damaged personal relationships--by surviving a carefully controlled horrible experience, two sisters, or a father and son, or whoever, can get over long-term feelings of antipathy to have a positive relationship going forward.

This brings up a LOT of questions, but I'll get to that in a minute.

Esther is skeptical because the therapy is a little too reminiscent of repressed memory therapy, which of course has been thoroughly debunked, but not before it ruined her father's life.

More questions, but give me a second.

During a demonstration, there are complications, and there you have most of the plot.

So there are three central stories being told here. The two that comprise most of the book are the story of the illusion--Esther and Jennifer, growing up together and encountering evil--and the violent story playing out at the clinic that sends the inside story spiraling out of control. The framing story--Esther investigating this new therapy--might not even be worth counting as its own, but I actually found it one of the most interesting ones, especially from a worldbuilding perspective.

Because the new therapy was just meant to set up the story, but it raises SOOOOO many questions. I'm not even worried about the scientific issues, like the fact that they can control dreams with drugs or see what's going on in the dreams with monitors (though that at least gets a nod in the story). I'm talking about the viability of this business. Like, you have a fully immersive VR system--one in which the subject has no idea the experience is not real--and your go-to application is...this?

Actually, I guess I think therapy is a good first application here, but therapy specifically based around healing relationships by inducing a shared trauma experience just seems...unlikely. How many people have relationships in their lives that involve deep antipathy and a desire on both sides to get rid of that antipathy? And are those the people who are trying expensive, cutting edge therapeutic technologies? Are they really the ones who are being failed by talk therapy?

It just seems like a campy level of setup for an otherwise kind of serious story. Like, I would expect this to be the premise of a very cheap, B-grade horror story, the kind that winks at you with its own silliness. The kind that is a movie on Spike TV. (Though now that I think about it, they actually made this movie and it was anything but cheap.)

I also found Esther's conflation of this with recovered memory therapy to be kind of spurious. I mean, this is kind of the opposite--it's creating new, purposefully false memories. I could see a whole host of problems with it, but none of them are the ones Esther's looking for.

As horror novels go, it was engrossing and kept you wondering what would happen. I really did enjoy reading it. But what I walked away with were questions--so many questions, and not ones the story gave me a lead on.

Also, would you ever go into an immersive virtual reality experience? Would it make a difference if you would know inside the story that it wasn't real? I think my answer might be no, but I'd like to know yours.

So... I may have accidentally ordered the wrong book on Netgalley. Two books, same name, easy to get confused, I guess.

This book was a disaster. It was terrible. The only good thing about it is that it was relatively short (too short, frankly, to be considered a novel), but the rest of it was an eye-sore. The worst, poorest writing I have come across. No sense of pacing, non-existent charaterisation; full of expository dialogue. This kind of book is the reason why sci-fi and other genre books get such a bad name. Everything wrong in the world of writing is in here - heck, it even has giant chunks of text within parentheses! *head-desk*

The main protagonists are all women - there's a total of three of them and they're pretty cliched in themselves. The perfect, skinny protagonist Esther, with a haunted past and awkward social standing; the bossy, stocky Dr. Webb with a vivacious personality and genius intellect; and the shadowy assassin, Marline, who undertakes an attack on the facility Webb has built, and does serious damage to both Esther and Webb. I think Marline is supposed to be hot. I honestly don't remember.

This was an incredible waste of time. I'm not sure what the publisher was thinking when they give this train-wreck the green light. It's substandard even by a child's standard.

There's only telling, no showing. It would make any sane person want to gouge their eyes out. The pacing so atrocious - the book opens with a chase scene so bland it does nothing to coax you into reading the rest.

The author is also far removed from reality. At one point, the super successful, genius scientist at the centre of things surmises that the people working for her are all 'true believers' (because isn't that the only way to do a job?) but either only in it for the fame and glory that is impending - one that only she will bask in - or they simply don't care. I take it the author has never had to get herself a regular job, working for people too up their own selves to care about the minions trampled beneath, because if she had, she wouldn't have painted the good doctor's staff as black and white as she does.

I feel like the author gave up on internal logic and facts to get to the final twist. The twist is interesting but doesn't flow with all that went before. The bad guy, Marline, was greatly hyped and became an integral character in the scenario, but in the end her arc and storyline were not developed or concluded. I couldn't quite figure out how Esther became the main target of the 'attack' by Marline and her invisible bosses, because all signs and logic pointed to mad scientist Webb - it's just that Esther ends up suffering long term consequences from the attack. Webb and Esther were both trapped in their minds, so how did Esther break free? How did she even know to break free? She didn't know that Webb was in danger in reality, so where did the impetus to get out and save her come from? And who cares!

Given the brevity of this book, I wonder if this is supposed to be part of series, in which case as a first book it simply doesn't flesh the world out enough for the reader to want to come back.

The especially terrible writing and too many expository asides made for bland and halting scenes. I love that all the characters are women, but it doesn't help the fact that the text itself was too poor to enjoy. Don't bother with this book - it's not worth a read. Harsh, but true.

Final Girls starts out with a scene from a horror movie. Two young sisters are running for the border of a small town. It's harvest festival, their parents have been killed, and if they can just make it there, they'll be save from the supernatural horror hunting them.

This isn't actually what the story is about. Instead, it's about a scientist who has developed a combination of drugs and VR that can help treat behaviour problems. The two sisters are actually adults, and they've never been able to stand each other. But by going through this fake scenario, and a couple more later, they can develope the closeness they never had. Making the scenario so fake means that they will have the benefit of the experience without ever thinking that it was actually real events

Now a reporter has arrived to examine the process and write about it for a science magazine. She's very sceptical, based on personal history. Her mother died when she was young, and her father died in prison for abusing a patient. After his death, it turned out that the testimony that condemned him was 'recovered memories' that were completely fake.

So, she and the scientist behind the therapy go under it together. Two preteens meeting and becoming best friends. And naturally, this is where everything goes wrong.

To be honest, I never really liked horror movies. They tend to be ridiculous, and so many just go for the gross-out, fake jump-scares. But Seanan McGuire (aka Mira Grant) loves them. This book is pretty much a love-letter to those movies, and especially (I think) the eighties versions of them. And that love comes through on every page of this novella, pulling the reader along with them.

I definitely recommend this title.

Mira Grant offers up a fine technohorror novella, exploring the interface between virtual reality and the pliable human mind. Esther Hoffman, a journalist and dedicated pseudoscience debunker, and her virtual reality BFF, technotherapist Dr Jennifer Webb, explore an experiential world that is literally mind-bending.

I mostly know Mira Grant for her NEWSFLESH Series, a narrative that takes place post-zombie apocalypse in a rebuilt, techno laden society. I enjoy that series a fair amount. So when Serena told me that she had written a short story that once again takes on technology, and writes a love letter to horror movies and their scenarios, I was pretty well intrigued. So that takes us to the novella FINAL GIRLS.

I really enjoyed this story/novella. It was a quick read, but Grant did a very good job of establishing place and character, so well so that I was never questioning the technology or societal advances and felt like I knew the characters. I fully understood the motivations of both Jennifer and Esther, and while I wasn't as sold on the root of the conflict I did like the antagonistic 'assassin' character who came in and stirred up all the trouble they ended up facing. I also kind of felt like I was coming to a familiar story, as, without giving too much away, Grant revisits some of the same horror themes from the NEWSFLESH series, even if it's tweaked a bit. There was a good deal of suspense and a I found myself getting nervous to see how things shook out in the end. I would be interested to read more stories within this universe, one that is a bit removed from ours, but not too much.

Fans of the NEWSFLESH series will find a lot to like here, but so will fans of technothrillers and science gone wrong stories. Grant is very talented at her craft.