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.

5/5 definitely!

The is my first experience with a book by this author and I LOVED IT. Books like this are super successful in their craft the same way the shows like The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits and Black Mirror are. It gives you just enough to really get you comfortable in the world and narrative without any fluff or filler. This proves that you don't need pages and pages of inner monologue (it has it's merits as well, of course) to achieve fully formed characters with motivations and personalities all their own.

This format always seems to work very well in the horror/dystopian setting, yeah? I've noticed that at least -- Shout out to Tellers by Rick Moss for also using the short-story format and knocking it out of the water. Maybe it's because staying too long in these sort of worlds starts to make it more comfortable and less terrifying merely due to prolonged exposure?

*********SPOILERS PAST THIS LINE***********

I'm not too privy on how scientifically possible the events of this book could be, but VR IS getting better and better and more immersive by the day and I do like how the two protagonists don't just come out of the whole experience unaffected. They're still stuck between their adult and teenage selves. The ending is perfect as it leaves you wondering how they cope with that.

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.

“Fancy some virtual reality total emersion healing? Zombies included free of charge….”

My kindle informed me that reading Mira Grant’s latest novella “The Final Girls” was going to cost me 135 minutes of my time, having read a few of Mira’s books in the past I was happy to reacquainting myself with her new release. I’m pleased to say it didn’t disappoint and was an highly efficient mix of horror, speculative and science fiction. This author is particularly effective when she mashes up horror with these other genres. Great examples are the “Newsflesh” series which begins with “Feed” (2010) which has news hungry and techy brilliant teens fighting it out after a zombie holocaust. Also very entertaining is the “Parasite” series, a complex blend of hard science and horror, in which a genetically engineered tapeworm eradicates illness, but the tapeworms soon get nasty and mankind is in serious pearl. Both these sequences are great examples of what Mira can do. However, her real name is Seanan McGuire, and this highly prolific author also writes urban fantasy under that name.

“Final Girls” has a whiff of both series mentioned above. Pulling in at just over 100 pages, it’s a good length for this compact and tight story which has a high technological drive. I also think it is a very assessable book for YA readers as this brisk read has no excess flab at all. Be prepared also for a VERY cool opening sequence. Two young women are being stalked by something nasty in a dark wood, imagine your innermost fears (scarecrows here…), and when death is just about to arrive….

END PROGRAM? You wake up….. Welcome to a new type of therapeutic healing that is based on total emersion therapy, which is pretty much the same as living in a computer game. However, waking up from this particular type of therapy means that what you have experienced feels real and remains with you beyond the dream. So whatever experience you had in the therapy also changed you because it is in many ways real. The whole story is set within the Webb Virtual Therapy Institute who have pioneered this new type of technology and are using it to help people with psychological, family and mental problems. Everything from arachnophobia to siblings who have hated each other since they were children. By having shared psychological experiences through the Virtual Therapy the company claim they can overcome all psychological problems.

This leads to the main thrust of the plot, science journalist Esther has arrived at the company to interview the lead scientist Dr Jennifer Webb and believes it to be a load of dangerous rubbish, this is partially to do with an issue from her past and previous scientific trails that failed. We soon realise that for Esther to truly write honestly about Virtual Therapy must experience it first hand. Dangerous stuff… As Dr Webb also has her own very dodgy agenda…. Throw in a few other curveballs and you have a very nippy little story which can easily be read in one sitting.

I really liked the way the plot manoeuvred between the real and the virtual world, the blurrings of it all, not to mention at various points you’re not entirely sure who is shafting who. The flip back to the teenage versions of the characters were also great, equally so an ending that will definitely make you smile. Through much of it the author successfully projects the virtual reality world as a type of computer game, the problem being someone is in charge of the computer code and it’s definitely not you. A very good read.

The Final Girls is being released by Subterranean Press towards the end of April and is well worth the £3.99 price tag for the kindle version. I really would avoid the £32 price being quoted on Amazon for the hardback though!

Thanks to Netgalley and Subterranean Press for providing a copy of this in exchange for an honest review.

For those who don't know, Mira Grant is a pseudonym for the genius and brilliant Seanan McGuire who, over the past two years, has weaseled her way up to my top favorites list of authors. She's absolutely fantastic, and this shorty is just another shining example of how she can throw you into any situation and make you care about the characters and what's happening to them AND make you feel like the world she's creating is bigger than just the words on the page.

This one wasn't perfect by any means - the resolution seemed a little rushed, and the novella could have been another 20-30 pages long and felt more complete, but it was still a shiny little gem of a story.

Read it. :)

I would like to thank Subterranean Press, Mira Grant (Seanan Mcguire), and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy of Final Girls!

Esther Hoffman is a reporter who lost her father due to phony regression therapy, so she dedicates her life to debunking anything she sees as pseudo-science. Esther hears about Dr. Webb who created virtual reality technology to heal relationships, emotional trauma, and phobias by putting people in virtual horror movies and nightmares. As Esther tries the virtual reality technology there is something far worse going on in Dr. Webb's facility. A woman has broken into the facility to steal the technology behind the new virtual reality therapy.
Mira Grant (Seanan McGuire) uses her unique writing style to her advantage. She is incredible with the written word. This book read like a Cadillac. The story line was smooth and crisp. The author paced the story to perfection, and the transitions were excellent. This novella will have you on the edge of your seat and biting your nails. I couldn't put it down until I finished it. This novella is definitely a one sit read, so carve out some time in your day to read it. The ending was a little abrupt, but what an ending! That ending was epic! Needless to say, this novella packs a powerful punch!
I highly recommend this novella to anyone who likes horror and suspense books. I also recommend this book to anyone who likes Seanan McGuire's work!

5/5 stars!

Wow! What a cool, fun, smart little techno-thriller this is! Esther, a pop-science reporter, goes on assignment to investigate an experimental psychological treatment involving deeply immersive virtual reality technology. When Esther decides to go under the treatment as part of her story...let's just say some very real shit hits the virtual fan.

I'm new to exploring Mira Grant's (Feed) work but have read a little under her pseudonym, Seanan McGuire (Every Heart a Doorway). It's clear that she's very knowledgeable in her chosen genres. Largely, this novella borrows a lot of ideas from other sources, mixes in some original thoughts, and comes out the other side a very thoughtful story. I'm in a rare moment where I actually think I want this to be adapted to screen.

I think the book's length is perfect for adapting because there's very little that would need to be trimmed. It's a very tight story with no filler and a small, manageable cast of characters. There are tons of different influences at work here. There's a bit of corporate espionage ala Jurassic Park mixed with a sort of Cabin-in-the-Woods-meets-Lawnmower-Man vibe which creates a lot of action very quickly. There's a good amount of thriller/horror-like content with out actually being a horror story and some nice metaphor that wraps up the end pretty nicely.

If you're looking for a short but exciting read with a cool, techno-horror edge this is worth a shot. It's well worth the sum of its parts.

Copy provided by NetGalley in exchange for honest review.
As I've come to expect from Ms. Grant, a thoroughly good read. Perhaps a bit rushed: at times it felt like the outline for for a larger/longer piece. Taken for what it is, any reader familiar with the author's body of work won't be disappointed.

I got this novella through NetGalley to review. Previous to reading this I have read Grant’s Newsflesh series (loved it) and the first couple books in her Parasitology series (didn’t like it much). Grant is a pen name for Seanan McGuire who writes many urban fantasy series (October Daye, Incryptid, Velveteen vs.) which I absolutely adore. This was a well done novella. I enjoyed the concept but thought the ending felt a bit rushed.

This whole story explores the concept of what would happen if you could fix social/mental disorders you suffer from by working through VR nightmares. Supposedly fear is a strong motivator and could potentially be used to change your most basic reactions to people and/or life situations. Of course Dr. Webb wants to use this for good to help people. However, Esther is a skeptic that is out to prove the Dr. Webb is full of it.

When Esther agrees to try the therapy out to debunk it, things go horribly wrong. As you might imagine there are a lot of thriller/horror aspects to this story. Things get quite gory and creepy at times. Despite this I never felt super scared reading this...just kind of creeped out.

I felt like this novella didn’t quite reach its full potential. You are talking about dealing in nightmares here and IMHO things never get all that nightmarish. I just feel like that part of the story could have been a bit more creative and engaging. I however, did really enjoy the idea of using nightmares as therapy and thought that was interesting.

I also felt like the ending was a bit rushed. I would have liked to see in more detail (just another little chapter or something) how things played out between Dr. Webb and Esther. All that being said this was a good novella that makes you think while delivering a thrill.

Overall this was a good novella. I think it had potential to be a great novella but it didn’t quite make it for me. Some of the concepts were really interesting and I liked the main characters. I thought some aspects could have been more creative and the ending was a bit rushed. I would recommend for Mira Grant fans and for horror fans.

The first stand-alone stort-story / novella I've read by Mira Grant (all the others have been in her Newsflesh universe), and it reminded me why I prefer longer novels in order to flesh out the universe more. I loved the premise of the story (revisiting problems via dreams and augmented reality), but thought the writing could have been better. The suspenseful part of the story wasn't nearly as powerful as it would have been, if you'd gotten to know the characters better, and I missed some sort of proper resolution / explanation at the end.

Still, Mira Grant always writes stories worth reading, and despite my small complaints I did enjoy the book and am as always eager to read more from her hand.

This novella by Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire is a fast and thrilling read. The plot is unusual and interesting and the end is fitting. That being said, it is definitely for fans of Science Fiction-recommended for library collections with a strong demand for the genre.

A great genre-busting novella: sci-fi, horror, psychology, meditation on female friendship, and even a bit of corporate espionage. I quite loved this, and it's just the right length for the story it tells.

I was going to say that I'm interested in reading more from Mira Grant, but apparently I already have -- I didn't realize that she also publishes as Seanan McGuire. If all her work as Grant is as good as this, I'm bound to love it.

Esther has an assignment to write an expose on what she's sure is another form of crank therapy bound to cause more harm than good. She's set to actually experience this technology for herself, but it comes with an awful lot of safety waivers.

Dr. Jennifer Webb is the creator of the therapy. She knows she has a groundbreaking technology on her hands, she just needs to convince the perfect skeptic to advocate for her. It's a gamble, but one she's willing to take.

The technology deposits patients into a chemically enhanced virtual reality, putting them in the middle of their very own horror movie nightmare.

The novella takes virtual reality into interesting territory, blurring the lines of real and invented. Like many great pieces of classic science fiction, we're left with the reminder that any tool or technology may be used for purposes far different than intended.

Grant/McGuire always constructs characters that are compelling and easy to care about, and this story is certainly no different. One to pick up.

What fun this was! I'm a huge fan of Mira Grant's work, and this was no exception. Give this a read--you won't regret it. It was fascinating the whole way through! Great idea, too.

I've been a fan of Ms Grant's work since I stumbled over Feed in an airport bookstore many years ago. With each new series she continues to impress more and more. But when it comes to her sort works I look forward to them even more and Final Girls doesn't disappoint. Tight focused plotting and twists that you don't see coming all in just 112 pages. The print edition may be a little pricey for some coming from Subterranean Press but it's worth every penny.

Electronic ARC provided by NetGalley.

My first thought on reading "Final Girls" was that this would make a fantastic horror movie. "Final Girls" follows a journalist named Esther as she investigates a controversial virtual reality treatment for psychological and relationship issues. I don't want to give too many details because I think that the story is best experienced without knowing what to expect, but I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and it's based on a great concept.

One additional note, it's refreshing to read a story (especially a horror story like this one), where all of the principle characters are female. For such a short book there was some really good character work and the pacing was quick without feeling rushed. This was another great Mira Grant novella.