Hardcover, 339 pages
English language
Published July 13, 2021 by Berkley Books.
A fast-paced, thrilling horror novel that follows a group of heroines to die for, from the brilliant New York Times bestselling author of The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires.
In horror movies, the final girl is the one who's left standing when the credits roll. The one who fought back, defeated the killer, and avenged her friends. The one who emerges bloodied but victorious. But after the sirens fade and the audience moves on, what happens to her?
Lynnette Tarkington is a real-life final girl who survived a massacre twenty-two years ago, and it has defined every day of her life since. And she's not alone. For more than a decade she's been meeting with five other actual final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, putting their lives back together, piece by piece. That is until one of the women …
A fast-paced, thrilling horror novel that follows a group of heroines to die for, from the brilliant New York Times bestselling author of The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires.
In horror movies, the final girl is the one who's left standing when the credits roll. The one who fought back, defeated the killer, and avenged her friends. The one who emerges bloodied but victorious. But after the sirens fade and the audience moves on, what happens to her?
Lynnette Tarkington is a real-life final girl who survived a massacre twenty-two years ago, and it has defined every day of her life since. And she's not alone. For more than a decade she's been meeting with five other actual final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, putting their lives back together, piece by piece. That is until one of the women misses a meeting and Lynnette's worst fears are realized--someone knows about the group and is determined to take their lives apart again, piece by piece.
But the thing about these final girls is that they have each other now, and no matter how bad the odds, how dark the night, how sharp the knife, they will never, ever give up.
I really enjoyed this book. Fast moving, action packed, fantastic characters and with nods to the horror film genre.
I really struggled to get into this novel and contemplated between two and three stars until the last four chapters, which seem to pull everything together and kept me on the edge of my seat. However, until those last few chapters, I found myself distracted while listening and forcing myself to stick with it.
If you choose to read this novel, be patient with it. The payoff is pretty good.
Lynette is both the best and worst part of this story. (Probably intentional on Hendrix's part.) She's the character with the most significant growth arc. While she seems like a pretty reliable narrator for a while, she's definitely not, and it can be both frustrating (worst) and intriguing (best) to interpret whether she's actually telling an accurate story.
With the exception of Heather, all of the final girls are pretty interesting. Since the slasher series Heather represents is my favorite …
I really struggled to get into this novel and contemplated between two and three stars until the last four chapters, which seem to pull everything together and kept me on the edge of my seat. However, until those last few chapters, I found myself distracted while listening and forcing myself to stick with it.
If you choose to read this novel, be patient with it. The payoff is pretty good.
Lynette is both the best and worst part of this story. (Probably intentional on Hendrix's part.) She's the character with the most significant growth arc. While she seems like a pretty reliable narrator for a while, she's definitely not, and it can be both frustrating (worst) and intriguing (best) to interpret whether she's actually telling an accurate story.
With the exception of Heather, all of the final girls are pretty interesting. Since the slasher series Heather represents is my favorite of the genre, I wanted more about her character. I wanted her character to have more of a story. I thought this was going to happen at the end but then it got dropped. I'm guessing Hendrix wanted to leave the supernatural element of her tragedy part of the mystery.
Finally, Hendrix does a nice job of teasing out one of the themes and then making them overt at the end: There's more to life than just staying alive.
In the end, I'm glad I took the time to stick with this book, but it's hard for me to recommend because it plods along for so long.
