The Final Girl Support Group - Outside of a Dog

Hardcover, 339 pages

English language

Published July 13, 2021 by Berkley Books.

ISBN:: 9780593437049

No rating (1 review)

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.

6 editions

Tilde Lowengrimm reviewed The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

Fun, chaotic, preposterous pulp

No rating

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 …

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.