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Book Review: The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

 

The final Girls Support Group by Grady Hendrix

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

Berkley, 2021

ISBN-13: 9780593201237

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, Audible audiobook  ( Bookshop.org |  Amazon.com )

 

 

The Final Girl is the lone survivor of horror movies. She fought valiantly, defeated the killer, and avenged her friends who were each gruesomely dispatched by the killer. But after the truck drives away, the sirens fade, and the credits roll, what happens to our heroine, other than the potential for franchise sequels? We find out in Hendrix’s new novel, The Final Girl Support Group.

Hendrix, as with We Sold Our Souls and The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, displays an uncanny ability to write complex women. Combining this with the concept of the Final Girl works quite well. Twenty-two years ago, Lynnette Tarkington survived a harrowing massacre. For more than a decade, Lynette and other women meet in the Final Girl Support Group led by their therapist, Dr. Carol Elliot. Lynette keeps herself locked safely in her home with her best friend, a houseplant named Fine. She has no identification paperwork or ID, no social life, and keeps her head on a swivel when she does gather up her strength to go outside, usually to the support group. In the support group, we meet Adrienne Butler, the first Final Girl; Dani Shipman, who along with her partner Michelle owns a rescue ranch for abused and abandoned horses; Heather DeLuca, whose life has gone off the rails with bad decisions and jail time; Julia Campbell, the talkative and angry paralyzed survivor of her own story; and Marilyn Torres, the wealthy wife of a CEO, who is a recovering alcoholic and activist in the community. When one of the women doesn’t show up for their regular meeting, Lynnette’s paranoia kicks in full-bore. Someone knows about the Final Girl Support Group and wants them all to suffer, and then die. The suspect knows where they live and congregate, and what they do. It comes to light that someone in the group has written a tell-all book about the women in the group. Who betrayed the Final Girl Support Group? Lynette sets out to find the killer and expose the truth.

There is so much going on in this book, I had a hard time putting it down. If you like the slasher subgenre and have ever wondered what happened when the Final Girl’s story ended, pick up this book. Interspersed throughout the book are articles and reports about the Final Girls, which add that extra touch to each character. Highly recommended.

 

Contains: violence, gore, body horror, descriptions of torture

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

 

Posted on August 17, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: From the Depths: Terrifying Tales by Richard Saxon

cover art for From the Depths by Richard Saxon

From the Depths: Terrifying Tales by Richard Saxon

Velox Books, 2021

ISBN 979-8745999574

Available: Paperback, Kindle ( Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com )

 

It’s always a pleasure to discover a new author of dark fiction, especially when his debut collection is innovative, interesting and extremely entertaining.

 

This is the case with Richard Saxon, whose short story collection is characterized, first of all, by the unusual, long titles of each tale, which give you a hint of what is waiting for you in the following pages.

 

Here are some examples of the more accomplished stories.

 

“The Ocean is Much Deeper Than We Thought” is a tense, riveting piece blending SF and horror, about some mysterious, dangerous creatures living in the deepest part of the ocean, while “I Woke Up During Surgery. They Weren’t Trying to Save Me” is a very disquieting tale of medical horror where a man cured from cancer develops a scary kind of power.

 

The tell-tale title “My Job is to Watch People Die” perfectly describes the content of that unusual, well crafted story, but in  “We Have Been Guarding an Empty Room for the Past Five Years. Today We Found Something Inside”, a slightly surrealistic piece, the horrific nature of the story becomes apparent only at the end.

 

In the excellent “Every Year on My Birthday, I Have to Die”, a man keeps dying and then coming back to life when someone else takes on his death, while in “A Man Knocked at My Door at Midnight, He Gave Me A Horrible Choice”, an insightful tale with a Twilight Zone feel, the meaning (or the lack of it) of our existence on Earth is cleverly addressed.

 

“Arbor Vitae” effectively describes the story of a woman who makes an unusual, terrible bargain to protect her son.

 

The best story in the volume to me is “ My Favorite Twitch Streamer Just Died. He’ s Still Online”, an outstanding piece investigating the apparently tragic mystery of after-life.

 

I strongly recommend this superb collection to every lover of dark, speculative fiction.

 

Reviewed by Mario Guslandi

Posted on June 3, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: Grotesque: Monster Stories by Lee Murray

cover art for Grotesque: Monster Stories by Lee Murray

Grotesque: Monster Stories by Lee Murray

Things in the Well, 2020

ISBN-13 : 979-8611527153

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition ( Amazon.com )

 

In Grotesque: Monster Stories Lee Murray has written tales in a wide variety of styles and subgenres in the horror genre. The combination of her imaginative twists on familiar tropes and the New Zealand setting and atmosphere creates some great creepy, dread-inducing, and horrifying tales.

 

Interestingly, three of Murray’s stories include mindless, killer creatures. In addition to her zombie story, “The New Breed”, which raises the question of who really is the monster in the story, two very different stories provide unique versions of the golem. “Grotesque” is a horror story about the uncovering of an underground passage between two French chateaux, framing events of 1560 when the sixteen-year-old king of France had to be smuggled out, sealing the passage behind him to contain… something.  “Into the Clouded Sky” revisits a character Murray has written about previously, Taine McKenna. This is a nonstop adventure with supernatural visitors, terrifying sand golems, and natural catastrophe, set in New Zealand, and moves at a breakneck pace. These two stories were original for this collection.

 

Other strong stories include “Edward’s Journal”, a Lovecraftian tale told in epistolary manner, paints a lush, wet, and terrifying portrait of an English soldier with the mission of burning the Maori people’s crops to force them to move of their land, lost and starving in the New Zealand forests in an increasingly surreal and sanity-breaking situation; “Selfie”, a post-apocalyptic story with a disturbing amount of creative and vividly described body horror; and “Dead End Town”, an incredibly grim and difficult story to read even before the supernatural gets involved, as it involves repeated violence towards and sexual abuse of a child.

 

I was excited to see a kaiju story, “Maui’s Hook”. I think these must be difficult to write, especially from the point of view of a person experiencing it,  because it’s hard to appreciate giant monster violence when it’s aimed at an individual human instead of another giant monster. Murray did a great job creating a terrifying, unkillable monster and chronicling its violence in a setting and context that I haven’t seen in kaiju films.

 

I haven’t touched on every story in this review but I found them all compelling. Grotesque: Monster Stories should have something to interest almost everyone. Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Editor’s Note: Grotesque: Monster Stories is a nominee on the final ballot for this year’s Stoker Awards in the category of Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection.

Posted on May 22, 2021 by , Reply
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