“I’m thinking two, maybe three, African American males, five-eleven to six-two, two hundred pounds apiece. One of them with a sawed-off shotgun. Maybe throw a skinhead in there, just to make it less racist.”

Why must we go this route? Seriously why does it always have to be Black men doing stuff like this? So annoying and frustrating. This author can’t help, but be slightly offensive in their stories. I had such high hopes for this book and after reading this part I’m done.

Ok I have to say that I do not watch Horror movies, so this was not my thing. The Horror movie facts before chapters felt like they took me out of the story and kinda interrupted my reading. the creepy aspect of this was ok, for being a "thriller" I wasn't very thrilled or scared while reading it. I did like the mystery element of the story.

Loved, loved, loved this book! It's not my typical read, but the concept was so original that it drew me in. I definitely did not guess at all the twists and turns and I was very creeped out by the shrine at Cassie's. The author clearly knows her horror story tropes and makes very effective use of them. 've been recommending this to everyone I know.

Phenomenal. I did not want to put this down after I started reading. I've read ever book by Grady Hendrix now and the only thing I'm disappointed about after finishing this one is that there isn't another waiting for me to tear into. The dedication in this hit me right in the feels.

The references in Grady Hendrix's books are always so much fun for me. He mentioned women like Ellen Ripley, one of the first first girls, and I was so happy as Alien is one of my go to series of books. The references throughout for 80's nostalgia were fun enough that even if you didn't grow up in the 80's you'll understand enough why the characters are discussing this random stuff. It's fun!

It also looked like Grady Hendrix really branched out with the characters. They weren't all white, suburban moms. While those characters are fine, and I loved that book as well, it definitely struck me as a white/black divide. It may be the truth for where he was writing though so I read that book with a grain of salt and this one with no salt needed, other than to hope I'm never a final girl!

I want to say I was pleasantly surprised but I can't because Grady Hendrix is starting to set his own high bar. I loved this. I can't wait for the next book.

Coming in hot with another thriller for you! This is my third Hendrix book, and honestly, I am in LOVE and it was my favorite by far!

What if all of the final girls from all of your favorite slasher movies from the 80s/90s were based in real women - and what if they were all in a support group together? Let me introduce you to - The Final Girl Support Group!

Based on classics like Friday the 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Black Christmas, SCREAM, these women have been meeting once a month to talk about their trauma for the last 20-30 years.

When they suddenly start being attacked one by one, they know they’re being targeted and their nightmares are not over yet!

I loved the “journal” entries and “articles” throughout the book and the discussion on why we enjoy slasher films and why we’re so obsessed with these Final Girls, AND some of our favorite slasher films are actually based off of real people (ie Ed Gein who was the basis of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) it was twisty (and a bit graphic at times) but it was FUN, y’all!

Fun fact: Hendrix also named his leading ladies after the women who played our leading ladies in the films!

If you haven’t read any Hendrix yet - I highly recommend you start with this one!

“Men don’t have to pay attention the way we do. Men die because they make mistakes. Women? We die because we’re female.”

THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP surprised me in the best way. i was on the fence of reading it bc the synopsis is pretty similar to FG by Sager but once i saw Charlize Theron hopping on the HBO series, i prioritized it 🤓 i started and finished this one poolside last weekend, so there’s something to be said about the bingeworthiness☝🏼there’s a ton of characters so at times it’s easy to get confused, but i enjoyed them all—and i didn’t see the twists (yes, more than one 🥳) coming 👏🏼 if you need a good thriller binge, this is for you!

Hendrix’s writing here is arguably his best (he’s a very unique author), and i think this would be a PERFECT spooky fall read 👌🏼 THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP follows six women who have gone through the unthinkable—they’ve all survived terrible massacres and came out as the final girl standing. they meet once a month with a therapist and when one of them doesn’t turn up to a session, they all assume the worst. the news confirms one of them has been targeted—so are each of them at risk?

can’t recommend this one enough tbh! the more i think back on it, the more i really enjoyed it 🥰 clearly couldn’t put it down! pro tip—save it for the fall to get you in a spooky mood 🎃

Overall, I thought that the premise of the book was more interesting than the actual storyline. As a fan of Grady Hendrix's writing and books, I was looking forward to this title. For me, it just didn't work. I had a hard time liking or relating to the characters and I felt that it was difficult to get through. I would say that the twist at the end of who was causing all of the problems was interesting. I did enjoy the slasher aspects of it and thought that the ideas for the book were nice.

Although this was a quick read, I found it hard to connect with the main character or become invested in any of the side characters. When the killer is revealed it also felt a bit lacking because we didn't spend that much time with the character to be real shocked that it was them in the end. The book was very fast paced which was nice and I loved the chapter breaks with news clippings and interviews, which was a great touch to add to the narrative. I've really enjoyed Hendrix's works in the past so I'll continue to read his other works in the future.

If you love the old slasher movies, this book may or may not be for you. As someone who has not watched a slasher movie since I was in high school (and I'm not saying how long ago that was) I felt some of the humor was lost on me.

I listened to the audiobook version of this book, and I have to say I was a little thrown off by the voice of the narrator. It kinda sounded like a grandma reading the story. I'm not sure how old Lynette Tarkington is supposed to be, but in my mind, she's at least 80.

I think the premise for this book was a good one, but it was way too drawn out. I kept thinking I was at the end and then would find out I had a lot of book left to listen to.

Loved it and think the concept is brilliant. The premise is that the final girls we know of from horror films are real people and we get an idea of how their lives would be in a real world setting. I liked the nods to the horror classics of the 80's that most fans know and love. I think the story was suspenseful and while I figured out who one of the bad people was before it was revealed, I did like the ride and the red herrings.

Received a digital ARC of this book via NetGalley.

Sooooo good! I love a good slasher movie, so I liked the idea of a final girl support group and the women being from the 80’s. Grady Hendrix is amazing at making me unable to put their books down.

Grady Hendrix does it again! I absolutely loved this book! He is one of the few male writers that actually can write a female character well. This book did not disappoint at all. I bought it for the collection at two branches I had ordering power for this summer! I even talked about this book in my book club's meeting this month. Can't wait for his next!

I LOVED Grady Hendrix’s “The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires” so when Netgalley sent me an ARC of “The Final Girl Support Group” I was very excited. It is such an interesting premise. “Final Girls” are the girls who survive the massacres in the 80’s style slasher movies we’ve all seen. Except in the book, the movies were made after real murders and the “final girls” are real women survivors that have been getting together for years with a psychologist to talk about their shared experiences. But suddenly bad things start happening to them. And that’s where we start.

Sadly I was a little disappointed in the book. “Slaying Vampires” was just a little too much to live up to. I did still really enjoy it though. It still kept my attention and I didn’t struggle to finish it at all. Actually the end is where it really ramps up. Because it has such a strong finish it almost made me forget that I was disappointed in it.

One of the main problems for me was that it had a pretty unlikeable protagonist. I usually kind of like unlikeable characters, but in this case I didn’t until the end. Which was probably the point anyway. I also had a really hard time keeping the other final girls straight. And for a lot of the book you are kind of left in the dark on important stuff. Hendrix is very good at not info-dumping but almost to a detriment. His characters will mention something that is obviously important but the reader knows nothing about it yet. Which tends to make me frustrated. I know other authors can do this successfully but I don’t think it was done well here.

Either way, the very strong ending makes up for most of the shortcomings of the rest of the book. I really enjoyed it and I will now probably read one of his earlier books. I like his style.

At first this book appears to be very derivative of slasher movies/stories. And the narrator is quite unreliable. But as the story unfolds, you realize that Hendrix constructs it purposely to make the reader feel that way. By the middle, there are so many suspects plus the creeping suspicion that maybe Lynnette really is crazy. Then the pace picks up and you just enjoy the ride to the end. I appreciated the discussions of slasher culture and what it says about women and men’s enjoyment of it without being obvious and preachy.

A great story line about a group of women survivors that belong to a counseling group. Someone starts coming after the group of final girls one by one. Lynette is the main character who has more character flaws than can be counted. Her only true “friend” is Fine her plant. Fine is named after final plant. Her entire family had been murdered and now the authorities are saying she was in on it. The group starts to distrust her but she is trying to save them from an unknown killer. The story starts really strong but then turns to a slow burn.

Thank you Netgalley and Berkeley for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Final Girl Support Group had such a strong premise that I couldn't wait to read this book! At about 50% in I stopped reading. I wasn't connecting to the characters and I think I expected more from Hendrix based on his last book The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, which I loved. Had I felt a stronger attachment to the characters, I would've finished.
Not for me.

What I Liked
The author's description of Lynette's routine when she had to leave her house is something I enjoyed reading the heck out of. It felt so real and so warranted because of what she had been through that I cheered her on!

There was no glossing over the violence in this book. Sure, the horror doesn't translate as viscerally on-page as it does on screen. Even so, it made for a thrilling read. Lynette's run-in with her monster reminded me a lot of one of the cases that Hannibal and Graham come across in the series--brilliant, bloody, and beautiful.

What I Didn't Like
The same things that bother me when I'm watching a slasher flick bothered me while reading this book too. For instance, Lynette surviving a sledgehammer to the head and being run over by a car. I mean, really? A long-winded final confrontation--another thing that is characteristic of the movies and one that I'm not a fan of.

The protagonist tells us the main reason she hates final girl movies is that the characters in them are reduced to lumps of meats--both literally and figuratively. And yet, isn't that what she and her friends do to Dani's gf when they leave her body in a park?

Conclusion
A very entertaining book that's written to keep readers from putting it down before they're done with it. I speak from experience since I went to work all smudgy-eyed after having stayed up until 4 in the am!

This book was so compelling and such a fun read. I loved the take on common slasher film tropes and found the characters to be delightfully flawed, while still rooting for them. Can't wait to purchase a copy for my library when the new fiscal year opens!

"They turn into women. And they live."

Oh how I loved this book. For anyone who knows me knows that I'm a huge horror fan. Huge. So a book about final girls? Sign me up!

A group of final girls meets up every month in group therapy. They talk about how they feel now and how they are coping with life in general after being a final girl. All seems okay until a final girl is killed off. And a killer seems to want them all dead. Well damn.

I didn't 100% trust the main character but I couldn't stop reading to find out what happened. It was a fun book if you love a good horror movie final girl.

As a huge horror movie fan, the title of this book immediately caught my attention. The concept of a final girl support group and getting to follow these final girls after the horrific ordeals they went through and just seeing how they deal with it all was very intriguing to me. I loved the concept of this book! And overall, I really enjoyed it!

One of my favorite things about the book were all the horror movie references. We have a group of final girls and their stories are based on some of the biggest horror franchises, so that was a lot of fun for me. We’ve got one girl whose story follows Friday the 13th, another’s is A Nightmare on Elm Street, and we also got Scream, Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and I believe our main character’s story (Lynette’s) was inspired by Silent Night, Deadly Night. But don’t quote me on that. I know of the series, but that last one is literally the only series I have not seen out of all of these. I will have to change that this upcoming holiday season, though!

Learning about what each girl went through was very intriguing, but also so sad and just frustrating. The Scream storyline was particularly infuriating because the final girl's boyfriend wanted to turn her into his very own final girl. It was disgusting. Lynette’s story was also quite horrifying. The things she endured and how she watched her family get horrifically murdered... It was awful! I was very engaged during these retellings, though. Like I said, this aspect of the book was one of my favorite things and I just really enjoyed seeing how the author took the concept of these horror movies and made them his own. It was great!

This world was just very interesting because we have all these terrible things that have happened to these girls, but of course, Hollywood being Hollywood, movies were made out of these tragedies. So not only do we have REAL final girls, but we also have the movies that were based on real-life events. There was one movie that was brought up quite a bit, Gnomecoming, and I still don’t know what real movie this fake movie is based on! 😂

Not only that, but we also have memorabilia from the real life events (aka murderabilia) that are quite coveted by a certain type of person 😬 One thing I found interesting was that not only was there murderabilia for things related to our final girls, but also to tragedies related to OUR real world! For example, H.H. Holmes was mentioned. The mix of fiction and nonfiction was very cool!

The mystery itself was interesting, but a little bit predictable. But like I said, I really enjoyed this book overall! The backstories were interesting, the gore was disgusting and awesome, and even the chapter titles themselves were a lot of fun! I definitely recommend this book, especially if you’re a horror movie fan like myself!