My wife and I went on vacation a couple weeks ago. I was meaning to make a video on my YouTube channel, or even just a blog post with some pics, but I never really got around to it outside of posting pics of some of the swag I got to my Twitter. But this is all beside the point.
It’s a three hour flight from KC to Orlando, and I was needing an audiobook to pass the time both ways. My immediate options were either Billy Summer: the latest Stephen King novel, or a book that was recommended to me by Grady Hendrix. Dear god, I really wish I’d gone with the fucking Stephen King book.
The book that was recommended to me was The Final Girl Support Group” a book that was promised to be a “wicked hilarious thriller” on Audible, but I honestly didn’t find it all that hilarious. Thrilling? Definitely. But I’m guessing Hendrix and I have differing senses of humor on this one.
Final girls, for those who aren’t in to slasher movies, are the lone survivors. They’re the ones who outsmart the killer, and end up standing tall while everybody else in the cast is killed mercilessly, horribly, and depending on the movie, hilariously. Seriously, as slasher movies get into the 4s, 5s, and 6s, it gets harder and harder to take this shit seriously. But I digress.
The titular Final Girl Support Group is basically what it says it is: a support group for final girls. The girls who beat their slasher, and are still experiencing the PTSD from it all.
It doesn’t take long to figure out how badly Hendrix probably wished they could use the actual slasher names. Names like “The Ghost”, and “Dream King” are all used in their place, but anybody who’s followed this subgenre of horror knows better. I’ll admit, I got a chuckle out of these names, as well as the fact the Chucky knockoff is a homicidal lawn noamb. Seriously, how have we not made one of those yet? We made one about homicidal dolls, leprechauns… Hell, take the Child’s Play name off of the reboot, and they even made a homicidal Alexa! But no lawn noamb? Travesty, I say.
That’s about as far as my overall enjoyment of the story went. From there, this book proved to be a real chore to get through.
When it’s action packed, it’s action packed. When stuff actually happens, it’s pretty god damn exciting. When there’s nothing going on, though, the narrator, Lynn, feels the need to assault my ears with a heaping helping of Twitter feminism.
Look, I don’t hate equality. I think women should earn the same amount of money as men, I believe they should be allowed to vote, and all that stuff that makes us equals. However, there’s feminism, and then there’s the angry misandry a lot of people on Twitter seem to THINK is feminism. It’s less about equality, and more about “putting men in their place”, “making men scweam”, etc.
I’m not going to sit here and tell you that every man is a saint. However, I’m really getting sick and tired of being lobbed into the same group as “manninists”, and your average 4chan user because I happen to have a penis. I can’t even admit in public anymore that I like The Punisher, because Twitter logic dictates that the only people who like The Punisher are angry white nationalists who plan on taking their dad’s AR15 to Walmart after posting their manifesto to 8chan or Gab or Parler or wherever. I can’t admit I like ANY slasher franchise, because the only people who like slasher movies are misogynistic sociopaths with repressed violent sexual fantasies. Hell, I can’t even enjoy video games anymore because of the looming spector of Gamergate, and the possibility they’re going to lob me in with the angry white incel crowd.
It sounds like an exaggeration, but frankly, I wish it were. And I listen to audiobooks to GET AWAY from this shit. And unfortunately for me, three hours one way, and three hours the other way consisted of having to be reminded that every single male who has ever lived is a misogynist pig who enjoys hitting women and voting for Donald Trump.
I get that Lynn is mentally shot. For fuck sakes, she talks to a houseplant! A lot of her anger towards the male gender comes from being a final girl on two separate occasions. Not to mention the plot of the book revolves around someone deciding to take out all the final girls only intensifies all those hostilities and paranoias.
But then they get to who ended up being the killer. And, embarrassing as it is to admit out loud, I ended up guessing wrong. And I guessed wrong because I was hoping for some type of creativity in the swerve that proved me wrong. Instead, it ended up being another stereotypical angry white male who plays Call of Duty, goes to “men’s rights” boards, and was even grooming an underaged girl into being his minion. I was so fucking disappointed with this revelation, it’s genuinely a miracle that I didn’t just quit reading right then and there.
Seriously, this character archetype is such cheap heat. Yeah, it works, and you hate the son of a bitch at the end, but it’s the bare fucking minimum. It’s on par with killing the dog, or having the antagonist rip out the protagonist’s eyes.
It would’ve been a LOT more creative if the therapist had actually been the killer all along. Or even have the most recent final girl end up being the mastermind all along! Hell, I actually thought that last one was where the story was going to go… But no, we ended up getting the generic angry-ass white boy who can’t tell the difference between Reddit and reality. Such a let down.
This was pretty much the big issue I had with the book. There were, however, plenty of other, all be it smaller issues I had as well.
For starters, it’s written in the present tense. Writing in the present tense is one of my personal pet peeves in writing. I want to read a book, not a movie script. But that’s me personally.
The audiobook is read by Adrien King, And I fucking hated her performance from start to finish. I don’t like talking ill about readers if I can avoid it… But I’m definitely putting Adrien King on my personal shitlist. Right up there with Dunsworth Bob, and Fisher Stevens.
I legit can’t remember the last time I’ve encountered a reader who read so slowly. It’s like she figured out she was getting paid by the hour, and decided to drag out this gig as long as she possibly could or something! Like, not cartoonishly so, but yeah, there were several times when I thought about breaking one of my cardinal rules, and bumping up the speed a couple knotches.
Her actual performance is pretty unbearable as well. Coupled with her obnoxiously slow pace, she literally sounds like she’s reading from the book. I mean everybody is clearly reading from the book when making the audio version, but it’s VERY obvious she’s reading from the book if you know what I mean. Inflections are in weird places at times, and I feel like King herself was an intern they pulled into the recording studio because Helen Laser had to cancel at the last minute or something.
But hey, I’m a straight white male who loves slasher movies, The Punisher on Netflix, and Mortal Kombat games. Therefore, Twitter logic dictates that I’m basically Hitler. So yeah, maybe take my vulgar, disjointed bitching with a grain of salt. Or just check out Grady’s other book about vampire hunting. Maybe that one’s better?
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