Final Girl Support Group

This horror-movie-themed action-adventure novel jumps from scene to chaotic scene with reckless abandon. Notionally focusing on the victims of cinematic violent crime, we see a blending of the hockey-mask-and-a-chainsaw æsthetic and the ideologies of serial killers & school shooters up against a dangerously genre-savvy protagonist whose agency whipsaws her from situation to terrifying situation as she strives always to be a good "final girl", staying safely ahead of horror-movie slashers who could be lurking in any shadow or behind any door.

Unfortunately, the pulpy cortisol stress-fest action and snappy protagonist inner monologue are held back by jittery jumps between different paranoiac visions of who the BBEG villain might be. I understand that the heroine has to be off-balance and always-guessing or else she'd use speed, surprise, and violence of action to rapidly resolve the story. But the quick flipping between suspects she knows with absolute certainty are behind everything makes character motivations hard to follow, and leaves the protagonist feeling like an unreliable narrator who might just be more of a danger to those around her than the real villain, whoever that may be. I was hoping for more of a fantasy of agency and capability, but this story left me constantly thinking that the protagonist might be overdoing things and jumping at shadows (which she was), and that (combined with the chaos & confusion) served to leave this much less satisfying than I'd hoped.

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.