Lynnette Tarkington is one such Final Girl. In her youth, a crazed maniac came into her home on Christmas Eve and slaughtered her family, leaving her the only survivor. In the years since, she and several other survivors have formed a support group lead by Dr. Carol, a renowned psychiatrist who has used her experience in dealing with the Final Girls to help countless other young women who've been attacked. That being said, Lynnette and her friends are unique. They aren't just survivors of massacres. As Lynnette puts it, their horrors have sequels. In each of their cases, a second attack has occurred where the monster they thought was finished has come back in one form or another. The repeated attacks have also led to movie franchises, though rarely to the benefit of the Final Girl herself. With that notoriety though, came fans, oddly enough the fans tended to be for the monsters, not the victims, and this has resulted in many traumatic experiences for the Final Girls, even after their initial encounters.
Lynnette's other Final Girl companions include Marilyn, who survived a massacre in Texas; Adrienne, whose monster attacked her and her friends at a summer camp; Dani, whose brother attacked her on Halloween; Heather, who encountered a person known as the Dream King; and Julia, a relatively newcomer to the group, though her encounter with her horror movie fanatic killers was still more than a decade in the past. It seems the Final Girl Support Group has been meeting religiously for over 15 years now, but then the unspeakable happens - they get news that one of their members has been killed.
The news of the death puts the survivors immediately on edge, and Lynnette starts to enact various plans she has in place in order to escape and hide. Unfortunately, she quickly finds her world crumbling around her and the plans she has laid almost immediately fall apart. As Lynnette starts to take action, she notices too many events tied to the Final Girls for comfort. What starts off with a killing at Dani's old summer camp, continues to a shootout at Lynnette's own apartment, and is followed by the apparent release of one of the supposed killers and strange news from another killer still behind bars. Lynnette quickly becomes convinced this is too complicated and must be a coordinated effort against all of the Final Girls, but can she convince anyone of that? She has a history of paranoia and even her closest friends are going to find it hard to see the conspiracy she is putting together. Couple that complexity with the web of secrets she herself is keeping from the group, and Lynnette will find herself in deeper and deeper water before she makes it out the other side... if she makes it out the other side.
I enjoyed The Final Girl Support Group from beginning to end, and I'm happy to say that it surprised me time after time. Each time I thought I knew how the book would play out and who the monster was, I was found to be wrong, right up until the point the plot wanted me to know. It's clear that Hendrix is a fan of the 80's slasher genre and he knows the genre well enough to develop thinly-veiled allusions to movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, and unless I'm mistaken, the more esoteric Silent Night, Deadly Night and Prom Night.
If you are a fan of the classic 80's teenage slasher movies and want an updated look at the genre, then The Final Girl Support Group is right up your dark and dingy alley. If you are just looking for a good action-packed thriller, then you might want to consider this book too. While the 80's horror angle isn't required to enjoy this book, it helps to see the parallels that Hendrix is drawing, but I assure you, it's still going to be a fun ride even without that foundation.
