When I was Christmas present shopping – my family all gets books and, after all these years, have learned to pretend to like it – I noticed a cover that caught my eye, My Heart is a Chainsaw, which I’ll write about later, maybe tomorrow. It got me started on a Final Girl reading binge.

The premise of this book actually attracted me when the book originally came out: a support group for Final Girls, middle-aged women who, when they were teenagers, barely survived being killed by the slashers we know from the films. In fact, this book reveals that the films were based on these Final Girl’s stories. I kept picking the book and putting it down. After MHIAC, I finally bought it.

For those of you who don’t follow the industry, the Final Girl is a horror film trope. Horror films often feature a Scooby gang: the handsome jock and his gorgeous girlfriend who can’t keep their hands off each other; the goofy nerd; another guy and maybe another girl; and the Final Girl, a nice girl who doesn’t have a boyfriend or who keeps it in her pants despite pressure from her boyfriend. One by one the kids are picked off by a serial slasher, until only the Final Girl is left. Sobbing in terror, she somehow manages to take out the killer. Think Jamie Lee in Halloween, Sigourney in Alien, Neve in Scream.

But not the narrator of The Final Girl Support Group who, although she survived, and although she is in the support group, wasn’t the one to take out her killer. So she’s not really a Final Girl – as her fellow support group members seem to remind her every day.

This book focuses on what it’s like being a Final Girl after the movie ends. These girls protect themselves: by moving out to a remote ranch; by marrying rich and surrounding themselves with walls and security; by owning their story and starting a foundation to help Final Girls recover emotionally from their ordeals; by seeking refuge in drugs. The narrator herself uses burner phones, takes 3 hours to get back and forth from her home-fortress to the support group, varying her route every time and watching carefully to make sure she hasn’t been followed.

Because all these women are being stalked by people obsessed with their stories, in the “girl’s imaginations and IRL.

I was a little worried that this book would be similar to the other Final Girl book I had just finished reading but, although they both dealt with final girls, the treatment was different. It far exceeded my expectations: it was a lot of fun to read – way too compelling to put down, which meant I didn’t get much sleep while reading it – and not gorey. A little violence, but nothing you wouldn’t see on prime time TV and waaaaaaay less than GOT.

I thought the concept was a fun one to play with. It kind of dragged a little in the middle, and I pegged the killer on the first page that they were introduced (but that could just be me; my husband always complained that I ruined X-Files for him by blurting out what was going on during the teaser). But there were still a lot of surprises, and it kept on surprising me throughout.

Here’s the interesting thing about both these books: they are both written by men. The female characters are still compelling but it does make me wonder: what is this obsession male authors and producers have with Final Girls?

Chew on that while you’re reading this book.

What’s your favorite horror book?