The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

 

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and publisher Titan Books in exchange for an honest review.

Grady Hendrix is one of those authors I know is always going to give me a good time, and The Final Girl Support Group is no exception. From the first page this book sucked me in and I loved every second of it. 

This is the tale of Lynette, a 'final girl' of the horror genre fame. For those not in the know, a final girl is the sole survivor of a horror film, usually found in 80s and 90s slashers. She is usually pure, very resourceful and innocent, and often deeply traumatised by her experiences. In this world, famous horror movies are based on true events and our 6 members of the support group are the survivors. Scream, Friday the 13th, Halloween-they are all here under different names, and now we get to see what happened to the protagonists and who they grew up to be. The plot kicks off when Lynette suspects that someone is intent on murdering them all and goes on the run, determined that this time she will survive again.

There was so much about this book that surprised and delighted me. Firstly, the fact that each final girl comes from a recognisable franchise was completely unexpected and I adored it as a horror fan. I loved trying to guess what franchise each girl came from and putting together all the references and clues. Having said that, this book is so much more than a love letter to the genre. As always, Hendrix's characters are on point here. Lynette is ruthless and not a 'good' person, but you are 100% rooting for her as a reader. I think it does a brilliant job of recreating that familiar relationship between a victim and the public. Sure, you feel sorry for her but can you trust her? Is she telling the truth? Hendrix plays on these feelings to the book's advantage and it really is so clever in its execution.

It is truly incredible to have a book like this with a plot like it does and it be one of the most feminist horror books I have ever read. Rest assured, it is not overt and can be easily ignored if you wish. But to have such a strong cast of female characters, to truly poke and prod at the trope of the 'final girl' and how it is perceived by people, to have almost no sexual content or sexualisation of the female characters in the slasher genre: all this is so impressive to me. I think it has some fantastic things to say in the conversation of gender and horror, and these are woven effortlessly into the story so it never feels preachy or like that is the only point of the book.

There's not much more I can say to praise this book without giving things away but truly, it was everything I hoped for and more. If you're wondering what the difference between Final Girls by Riley Sager and this is, they are similar in basic premise and analysis of the trope but vastly different in content and execution. I enjoyed both thoroughly and reading The Final Girl Support Group, I didn't feel like it was being unoriginal or retreading old ground. This is definitely more of a horror than a thriller and it explores a wider cast of characters and situations.

Overall, if you enjoy horror (and in particular, slashers) please read this book. It breathes fresh life into the genre and I know this is a story I will be rereading a lot for many years to come. If you try one of Hendrix's books (and you absolutely should) this is the one I recommend the most.

Overall Rating:

The Appeal by Janice Hallett

 

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and publisher Serpent's Tail / Profile Books in exchange for an honest review.

I was really intrigued by all the buzz surrounding this book. The Appeal is a novel told in epistolary form, a thriller presented as a series of emails and other evidence that you must examine as a detective. The plot itself follows the story of a group of people who are putting on a play together when the daughter of one of the families falls ill with cancer. Wanting to try an expensive experimental treatment, the family aim to raise money from the community. Within this context, there are a lot of rivalries and other events which culminate in the murder of one of the characters.

For most of this book, I was utterly hooked. The email style works well (although the downside of an ARC was there were a lot of format issues, which makes it hard for me to talk about the full experience of it) though it does take some getting used to. I really liked that there was a character we never heard from directly and who we could only build a picture of based on what others said to and about her. There were several undercurrents of tension and things which could go wrong, which helped keep me invested and made me very keen to read on.

However, sadly I think this book fell apart at the ending. After about 75% of the way through, you have gotten almost all of the evidence and so the book switches to text messages between the detectives investigating the case. This worked fine at first but quickly became dull to me. I wish the book had made this section much shorter and just revealed the solution because it wasn't fun for me at all to read 5 separate theories, followed by more speculation, followed by more theorizing. It just dragged a lot and it sucked all the joy out of the eventual reveal for me because the tension and momentum had been lost. I also think there were just a few too many characters to keep track of. Three or four of them could have been cut without much being lost, and it would have made for a tighter story.

Having said that, I still immensely enjoyed this book and I think it's a great way to format a thriller. The plot itself is good and, my issues with presentation aside, the ending is satisfying and works well for the story. I love murder mysteries and trying to piece together clues, so I will always appreciate any book which actually attempts to give you decent clues and encourages you to work things out. If the ending format had been different, this could have easily been a 5 star read for me.

Overall Rating:

.5

Beach Read by Emily Henry

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and publisher Penguin Books (UK) in exchange for an honest review.

Oh boy. I am a fussy romance reader but damn, did this book knock it out of the park! Beach Read is the story of January (I promise her name is not indicative of the type of book this is) a romance author who is struggling to pen her latest work after a shocking truth about her dead father is revealed. Having lost her faith in love, she goes to her father's secret beach house in the hopes of being able to finish her latest book. Whilst there, she runs into an old college crush/rival, Augustus. Gus pens only cynical literary fiction so in a bid to stimulate her creative juices, January bets him they can't write a book in each other's genres. Hijinks and sexual tension ensue.

The best way I can describe the romance in this book is to compare it to Pride and Prejudice. You have the reserved, somewhat grouchy male love interest and the bright, judgmental female determined that he has already dismissed her and so she has nothing to lose in teasing him mercilessly. It is obvious from the start that January has misjudged Gus but the slow build of their friendship and their sexual tension is utterly delicious. This book made me swoon, cry, turned me on and put me on tenterhooks. In short, exactly what I want from my romance fiction.

In summary, everything good you've probably already heard about this book is true. It 100% deserves the hype and I only have the most minor of gripes with it. Firstly, I think the title of Beach Read works well on the surface but the beach setting is almost never used within the story and also they never really make the link in-text to romance novels being 'beach reads' which is a shame. Secondly, it becomes comical how often the characters are interrupted right when they are about to have sex. Apart from these incredibly minor niggles, Beach Read is amazing and I recommend it to anyone who wants a genuinely good, well-written and engaging romance.

Overall Rating:

.5

Eight Detectives by Alex Pavesi

 

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and publisher Penguin UK - Michael Joseph in exchange for an honest review.

Oh wow, what a treat this book was! I adore detective fiction and this was just one big love letter to it. Eight Detectives is the story of an old crime author named Grant McAllister and a young editor named Julia. Years ago he published an academic essay on the mathematical formula for writing murder mysteries, accompanied by several short stories as examples of this formula. It had little success but Julia has rediscovered this collection and wishes to publish them again, expecting a much more successful run. As she reads through the stories though, she begins to find hidden references to an unsolved murder and she suspects something sinister may be going on.

The format of this book made it a joy to read. It alternates between one of the short stories, followed by Grant and Julia discussing it afterwards. Each short story is brilliant within its own right and many have homages to famous detective fiction (for example, one is essentially a twist on Christie's And Then There Were None). All homages are acknowledged within text by Grant and so this prevented the stories from just being rip-offs, and all the stories had their own flavour and energy which made for delightful reading.

These stories on their own would make this book great but amazingly, there is a fantastic plot beyond them. Julia soon starts to spot inconsistencies in Grant's stories and these begin to add up to a bigger mystery. The whole thing is clever, delicious and fantastically done. I simultaneously wanted to power through this book and languish in the sheer brilliance of it all. I kept waiting to be disappointed but I never was. And this book actually scared me at several points as well! I am rarely scared by books but a few of the short stories truly unnerved me to the point where I didn't want to be alone.

Overall, this book is a must-read for any fans of murder mysteries. The love for genre spills onto every page and the result is possibly one of my favourite books of all time. Everything is crafted so carefully and executed so well. Pavesi has some serious talent to hit the balance so well and I could not have wished for more from a book like this.

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A Cosmology of Monsters by Shaun Hamill

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and publisher Titan Books in exchange for an honest review.

This is such a hard book to describe. A Cosmology of Monsters is the tale of Noah and his family, a group of people all battling various monsters, both metaphorical and real. This is definitely lighter on the horror elements so don't go into this expecting a particularly scary tale. Instead this is more of focused look at one family with a rather bizarre (not in a bad way) supernatural angle. This is a horror only in so much as there are monsters and various horror elements (a ghost house, HP Lovecraft) are mentioned frequently.

This book has very compelling writing and was easy to follow most of the time. It is split up into parts and in between the parts are short chapters which I found a little odd. These short chapters were the only parts I found hard to follow. My main issue with this book is it felt like it frequently changed plot and then never returned to those elements. We start with Noah's parents and the story of how they met, which is fair enough I suppose. But then we are focused on his older sisters and his parents never receive much attention again. Then it moves onto Noah and, while his sisters remain present, their various plot elements aren't really resolved in a satisfactory way. The writing saved this from being a total disaster but I did feel confused about which parts of the plot were meant to matter, be it thematically or in terms of the actual story being told.

There were also unexpected romance elements in this which were...interesting. I don't want to spoil anything but it caught me off guard and it meant this was a slightly different story than I expected. Again, this was written so well in terms of tone that it didn't matter as much but I still feel it's worth mentioning. This does not have the tone of a horror book and I feel that's important to know going in. It offers an interesting look at how tragedy affects a family, mental health, coming of age and other engaging themes.

Overall, I am unsure what to make of this book. There are parts I really like, parts I can appreciate for what they did and parts that leave me a little disappointed. I think this is definitely a book that will stick with me a long time and one that is certainly worth trying if you're intrigued by the premise. Horror lovers might be left a little wanting by this book but for those who enjoy quiet tales with a focus on theme and character, this is definitely worth a shot.

Overall Rating: