The Last Final Girl

by Stephen Graham Jones, Eric G. Dove (Narrator)

Life in a slasher film is easy. You just have to know when to die.

Aerial View: A suburban town in Texas. Everyone's got an automatic garage door opener. All the kids jump off a perilous cliff into a shallow river as a rite of passage. The sheriff is a local celebrity. You know this town. You're from this town.

Zoom In: Homecoming princess, Lindsay. She's just barely escaped death at the hands of a brutal, sadistic murderer in a Michael Jackson mask. Up on the cliff, she was rescued by a horse and bravely defeated the killer, alone, bra-less. Her story is already a legend. She's this town's heroic final girl, their virgin angel.

Monster Vision: Halloween masks floating down that same river the kids jump into. But just as one slaughter is not enough for Billie Jean, our masked killer, one victory is not enough for Lindsay. Her high school is full of final girls, and she's not the only one who knows the rules of the game.

When Lindsay chooses a host of virgins, misfits, and former final girls to replace the slaughtered members of her original homecoming court, it's not just a fight for survival-it's a fight to become The Last Final Girl.



Running Time => 5hrs. and 53mins.

©2012 Stephen Graham Jones (P)2018 Journalstone Publishing

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Thriller, Audiobook, Mystery, Adult, Horror Thriller

Audible Audio

First published September 16, 2012

About the author

Stephen Graham Jones is the NYT bestselling author thirty-five or so books. He really likes werewolves and slashers. Favorite novels change daily, but Valis and Love Medicine and Lonesome Dove and It and The Things They Carried are all usually up there somewhere. Stephen lives in Boulder, Colorado. It's a big change from the West Texas he grew up in.

Reviews

[megs_bookrack · Rating 4 out of 5]

**4.5-stars**

I enjoyed reading The Last Final Girl so freaking much, however, I am torn on how to rate it. While my Horror-Loving heart says give it a 5, my brain says a 4-star rating would be more accurate.

After careful contemplation, I've decided to slice it right down the middle for this ode to Teen Slashers.



I grew up watching all things Horror. I had two older siblings, who both enjoyed the genre, so I was exposed to it at such a young age. Honestly, I don't really remember a time when I wasn't watching Horror movies.

From the years of being so freaked out by Poltergeist that I couldn't sleep in my own bedroom for 3-months, to watching The Gate on repeat because I had an 8-year old's crush on Stephen Dorff, Horror movies have always been a positive part of my life.



In The Last Final Girl, Stephen Graham Jones brings the spirit of all that is great in Slasher Horror to the page.

The format of this story is unconventional. It's written like a screenplay, with the narrator setting our scenes and describing character's actions, the POVs switch quickly and often, and there is a lot of rapid fire dialogue.

You really need to pay attention if you want to catch it all!



I listened to the audiobook and thought the narrator did a phenomenal job. I had a huge grin on my face the entire time.

I loved what SGJ did here. It was like he made a list of all things important to the genre, including movie names, characters, actors within those movies, fictional towns, tropes, themes, the well-known rules of Horror and then connected them all with an actual coherent story.



It was amazing and so fun. I could picture every scene because it was like I had seen it all before. The slow pan over the river, the discarded Halloween masks, the mysterious figure standing in the cornfield, characters like Lindsay, Izzy and Crystal, the scenes at the high school, the small town vibes, the final showdown; I loved it all!

I would definitely recommend the audiobook if you are interested in this one. Having read some other reviews, it doesn't sound like people who read the hard copy had quite the same experience with this that I did.



SGJ definitely took a risk with this one; it's really for a niche market of die hard fans of this type of movie. If you are, as it appears SGJ is, a student, if you will, of the genre, this is an absolute delight.

Every reference made me giddy and there are a ton. Overall, I love SGJ's edgy-style and always appreciate his nods to the classics. I will continue to pick up his work as long as he continues writing. This was certainly a fun ride for me!

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 3 out of 5]

A big part of growing up is often that you see a slasher film way too young—oh the joy of having older siblings or cousins—and having it haunt you for years. When I first saw Scream I was at an age where the tongue-in-cheekness of it went over my head and instead was convinced a masked man was going to gut me like a fish in my own home. FUN. Okay, I was a sensitive child, I actually avoided horror films for most of my life but have always been drawn to horror in novel form. Stephen Graham Jones is one of my favorites doing horror these days and an aspect I really love about his work is that, like Scream, his stories often demonstrate an awareness of the genre tropes and succeed by delivering a playfulness with the elements, often in a surprising way. The Last Final Girl is one of his most head-on metafictional horrors—actually let me throw on my tweed coat with cool elbow patches and say “I daresay one might call the novel a post-modern horror.” Because one thing that I love about Jones is that he writes horror with literary sensibilities and while his plots may often be “low brow” they are done in a rather “high brow” way that is satisfying no matter where you are on the brow scale of things.

But let me defend my thesis here that The Last Final Girl is post-modern. For starters, it has a level of self-awareness that is just shy of overdoing things (which, to be fair, overdoing it is sort of a staple of horror films) and is full of constant winks at the reader. Its filled with allusions to notable slasher films and while I’m sure a few breezed right by me aspects such as characters with names like Crystal Blake that poke at Camp Crystal Lake where Jason Voorhees drowns in Halloween.

What really takes this to a fun level of self-awareness and meta-analysis, however, is the style. Now it’s one that seems to really put some readers off and while I feel it would have worked better in a short story than a novel (even a novel that barely breaches beyond novella length) I still have to applaud Jones for effectively sustaining it and using it to have the narration serve as its own self-analysis. The story is written in present tense as if someone is describing a film you are watching. This includes set direction, attention to camera angles and pans, and even mentions of voice overs. It’s really cool and likely works best as an audiobook if you are deciding to read this. And while it isn’t perfect here, one can see the evolution of Jones work: when reading The Only Good Indians I kept thinking about how beautifully cinematic his writing was and now I understand he is able to achieve that level of brilliance by testing and perfecting his writing with experiments like this book.

This style makes you really feel like you are watching a movie, which is half the point of this book. The Last Final Girl, which features the survivor of a slasher-film-esque killing assembling a team of “final girls” to replace her slaughtered prom court as the serial killer returns for more blood, is a love letter to slasher films and is eager to display how aware it is of its own tropes. Sure, the story is often very corny, but—and here’s what I think is the coolest part of the books—this isn’t just an homage to slasher films but more so to their over-the-top and cheesy sequels.

‘”So…so is this a horror movie now, or a teen comedy?" Brittney says.
"It's an afterschool special," Izzy says.’

That’s right. The story begins in the final scene of a horror film as the final girl overcomes the killer—in this case the slasher wears a Michael Jackson mask and is thus dubbed “Billy Jean”—and for the first half of the book our new cast is painfully aware they are the lower budget sequel that has to be as ridiculous as possible to top the first one. Izzy makes for a great final girl focus as she is more or less aware of her role in this “film” and addresses the tropes in order to survive, like saying ‘stupid girls go upstairs’ to herself in critical situations. Final Girls are a big trope in Jones novels, and always so lovingly so. In an interview for his novel My Heart Is a Chainsaw, Jones opens up about what Final Girls mean to him:

‘The final girl is the vessel we keep our hope in. Final girls show us how to stand up against bullies. They show us how to insist on ourselves, in spite of everything. And that’s important, whether you’re dealing with some machete-wielder or a bad boss.’

How can you not love this guy when he is able to present horror as such a meaningful and hopeful message. Jones always comes across as such a cool guy and I recently learned he teaches a class on haunted house fiction and I would like to enroll.

It’s all very fun but we also live in a world where horror has been dissected, analyzed and spoofed to death, what more can be done?
In the film Scream, the character Billy asserts ‘Movies don’t create psychos, movies make psychos more creative,’ and Stephen Graham Jones is the literary horror answer to that. The 90s were full of spoofs, such as the Scary Movie films, but those often felt like they were never quite sure if they wanted to mock the tropes or actually tell a decent story and ended up being cheap laughs and not much else. What Jones does, however, is play with the tropes in a very loving way that make you grin when you get the inside jokes and shriek or cringe at all the right parts. He dives so far into parody it becomes something original, or, as a character observes here ‘maybe the expected's gone full circle . . . Maybe it's so obvious now that that's the only thing that can be a surprise.’ And that is exactly what Jones brings to the table.

The Last Final Girl is a cheesy good time that manages to still feel very thoughtful and heartfelt. The tension rises perfectly and when the violence hits, this is quite the bloodbath. It feels like an experiment, and while it is a good experiment it still seems a bit unpolished. Though we are in the present reaping the benefits from all this experimentation as Jones continues to put out exciting novels and I can’t wait to follow him into the grimdark future.

3.5/5

[Joe · Rating 1 out of 5]

My introduction to the fiction of Stephen Graham Jones is The Last Final Girl. Published in 2012, this love letter to slasher movies was a free download with Amazon Prime. Like disco, I grew up on the genre, Halloween being the progenitor and a handful of copycats noteworthy for varying the formula in interesting ways. Like disco, the slasher movie largely died out in the early '80s, which hasn't stopped authors who grew up on them from styling slasher novels that are either wall-to-wall with tongue-in-cheek gore, or obnoxious pop culture references. This novel is #2 and a floating pool turd at that. I abandoned it at the 20% mark.

Let's run down the things that make this the biggest bag of oderous excrement I've ever downloaded, shall we?

1. Jones writes as if jotting down a transcript for a movie playing in his head. I thought maybe this would turn out to be a student film experiment and the prose would kick in at some point, but it never did. Here's a sample:

--> the video cabinet.

It's a mix of VHS and DVD, heavy on the VHS.

We linger. It's all the Golden Age slashers, and beyond, and before, and besides. A horror library, so complete it hurts.

Like transcripts, I often found it difficult to follow what the fuck was going on. Jones' reliance on smart aleck shot descriptions or film editing flourishes to try to tell a story completely alienated me.

2. The jokey 'tude that hangs over every sentence. Jones dumps an entire Blockbuster Video card's worth of film references onto the reader--

The answer comes from the stall: "Little miss obscure reference is talking about Adrian Zmed."

The stall door creaks open slowly and it's a drop-dead gorgeous woman of a girl, wearing a Catholic schoolgirl outfit that's about two sizes too small.

She's sitting on the toilet, angling a line of smoke to the levered-open window, an actual dagger in her hands. She's using it to idly carve into the stall wall, above the toilet paper dispenser. It doesn't interrupt her speech, though: "From TJ Hooker, you know? Think a slightly older Patrick Dempsey. Zmed got shot every other episode, but it never really mattered Usually in the shoulder, too, just like our homecoming queen in-waiting."

"I'd say he's more like if Dempsey and C. Thomas Howell had a lovechild," Izzy says, not unimpressed here.

I can picture Jones sitting at Tierra Madre Coffee, wearing a beanie and sipping a decaf soy latte with an extra shot and cream with the name "Spartacus" written on the cup and cackling over his PC. Bully for him. I wanted to throw his beanie into traffic while he was still wearing it.

3. Teenagers in present day referencing the movies, television or music of the author. Not only do these characters reference pop culture they couldn't possibly have been exposed to by high school, they ping-pong antiquated references off each other like Quentin Tarantino and his bros at Video Archives in the late '80s.

"But Joe, it's supposed to be a joke. Lighten up."

This leads me to the fourth and final engine failure on this puddle jumper--

4. Joke books piss me off to no end. Now, I could see Douglas Adams standing trial for writing joke books, so it's possible to craft an imaginative one while throwing out one clever witticism after another. Once I see that the author doesn't want to be taken seriously, that he's joking, that he's gone to the page lightly, I can't take the characters seriously. If I can't take the characters seriously, nothing that happens matters. Humor, for me, has to be based on character and grounded in some reality the writer establishes. I don't like jokes. This novel is obnoxious as fuck.

The sheriff's waterlogged Playboy.

As it passes, the boys are taut on that glossy centerfold girl, her eyes smoldering up at them. And the rest of her.

"Look at the articles on that one," one of them says.

Before this shitty little shuttle-fucking piece of shit airline hits the swamp, I'll share one final complaint:

5. Who'as ever gazed into a body of water, noticed a Playboy magazine floating by and cracked a joke about it? Or tried to fish it out of the water? Last I checked, porn was readily available on the Internet and it isn't soaking wet. This is what also drove me up the wall about this novel. What the fuck did this author imbibe and I can get some for the next holiday weekend?

The Last Final Girl reads like a manuscript that some dude wrote in 1994 after mixing his prescription Ativan with Jägerbomb. He slips into a coma for twenty years and subsequently, the Scream movies deconstruct the slasher movie while the Scary Movie movies spoof those movies, but the author's bros discover the manuscript and publish it while their bro is in a vegetative state, which is an improvement on the state he wrote this fucking thing in. I hated this novel. It is smarmy. It is lazy. Its ideas are derivative and communicated as if through a fog of antidepressants and douchebag alcoholic beverages.

I've never told a reader not to read something, to give the first page a taste test and see if maybe it's me and not you, but if it comes down to spending any money or effort acquiring this one, I'd turn back if I were you.

[Sadie Hartmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5!
“Movies are the world, and that’s where I live, yeah.”
The Last Final Girl is basically Stephen Graham Jones flexing his love of horror cinema. It's this reader's opinion that horror cinephiles who love the idea of a horror fiction/horror cinema mash-up will applaud this and everyone else will land somewhere between "this was fun!" and "I feel left out".
Just to be perfectly transparent, the elephant in the room is the story's format.
This isn't a traditional novel. SGJ wrote this with a rapidly changing POV--almost like how a film camera will "cut to" the next scene. There are indentations in the paragraphs and a little black arrow indicating the POV or scene change. So don't expect to open this up and get a tidy, linear story from Prologue to Epilogue.
This is almost like a novelization of a movie or a screenplay--heavy on the dialog. Which is still entertaining as hell because, well because it's SGJ and he's basically a genius.
The characters are great. I love Izzy and Crystal.
And the storyline is so fun--Teen girls battling it out to be the last final girl in a slasher-style story with a murderous madman terrorizing everyone.
It's hilarious as much as it is seriously hazardous.
It's slick, slashery satire at its best--reminded me of SCREAM (which I actually did watch because who didn't?? I was a teen in the 90s)
However, as much as I had fun, I struggled with the readability a bit and wrestled with all the references. Feeling a little left out because I didn't grow up watching all the source material--I was too timid. I'm more of a horror reader than a horror watcher. So while I feel like I'm standing in my chair and clapping at the silver-screen style, I'm also sort of warning others like me-- this might not be the biggest success for people who don't watch horror movies.
But it's definitely worth having if you're a horror fiction aficionado--the Final Girl trope is always worth showing up for.

[Robert Vanneste · Rating 1 out of 5]

I liked the premise but not the execution . Disappointing.

[Rachelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

If every horror movie you've watched spontaneously became a campy fun slasher story, this is it!

[Mara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Getting the audio to listen to while reading this was key to me getting into the writing style of this one. Once I got the hang of how to read the prose that's meant to emulate a screenplay and move between POVs at a rapid rate, I really enjoyed this. There's a lot of parallels between this book and Jones' most recent release, but I would say I personally preferred this iteration

[Kimberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

THE LAST FINAL GIRL, by Stephen Graham Jones, was a fun, "B-style movie" book that referenced many of the '80's and other slasher films that I grew up on. The key component was that all the examples fell into the "final girl" troupe.

". . . slashers make final girls come into their own . . . "

Written as though it was more of a screenplay, this novel begins with the survival of Lindsay Baker--the "final girl"--whose friends were all murdered by a man in a Michael Jackson mask. While Lindsay details the ordeal (suffering from only a shoulder wound), the one thing she seems uncertain of is why the killer's body wasn't found.

In short, the perfect set up for a sequel.

"Movies don't create psychos, movies make psychos more creative."

Enter best friends Izzy and Brittney, the bad girls to counter Lindsay's "good girl" image.

I must admit that the style--where scenes kept jumping around randomly exactly as if it were a movie, and very few chapter breaks--was tedious at first. After about a quarter of the way through the novel though, I had adjusted somewhat and was able to read through more fluidly, knowing now what to expect.

". . . everything's horror, isn't it? Sometimes you just can't see the blood."

True to slasher movie form, Jones introduces many more characters to convolute the main plot, add sub-plots, and of course, provide extra bodies to magnify the body count. What made this stand out was having one of the main characters, Izzy, explain the steps to final girl movies and sequels all throughout.

". . . It's not bullets or fire or telekinesis or lightning or sequels . . . that kill a slasher, it's being unmasked . . . "

Some parts are meant to be obvious in this comedic take on the horror/slasher films, while others came off as surprising--even to myself, and I had seen many of the referenced movies.

". . . maybe the expected's gone full circle . . . Maybe it's so obvious now that that's the only thing that can be a surprise."

Most of the characters weren't that remarkable, but they were designed to be that way. Only a handful of the people in this novel have strong, memorable personalities. These, of course, are our new crew of potential "final girls". As Lindsay goes about picking a homecoming crew to replace those that were murdered in the original massacre (before our novel opens), it soon becomes obvious that she's picking these candidates for reasons of her own.

". . . she's setting it up so she's the final girl of all the final girls . . . "

Overall, I found this to be a very unique novel, in style, and the way the subject material is all-consuming at every turn. There is never any question that this is an homage, of sorts, to the final girl movies. I've always enjoyed sarcasm and dark humor with my horror, so this book was right up my alley in terms of content. The few characters we needed to know were predictable when they supposed to be, and yet less so during surprise moments--keeping me on my feet, mentally. If you're a slasher movie fan, chances are good that you'll enjoy this book-version as well.

"Life in a slasher film is easy. You just have to know when to die."

Recommended.

*This book was part of my NightWorm's subscription package.*

[Ellen Gail · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF at the end of Act I, which was at 20something percent. I had really high hopes for this after reading and loving The Only Good Indians, which honestly if you're even considering reading this book, go read that one instead.



I like books that try new things - squishing together genres, playing with format, just the willingness to try something new in general. As a horror fan, the idea of an extra meta horror movie as a book - heck, why wouldn't I be curious?

The Last Final Girl clearly loves the genre and all its tropes - but it fails to nail the execution. It steadily throws out references to beloved bits of the horror lexicon, but puts too little effort into making those moments resonate with the reader. The ideas are there, but not the details.

If you want a great book by the same author, go with The Only Good Indians. If you want great meta-horror, hell there's a million. But to name a few - The Final Girls, The Cabin in the Woods, and of course Scream.



Sadly, this book isn't a final girl. It's a no name character, a background body, just another number on a kill count.

[Rachel (TheShadesofOrange) · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 Stars
The meta movie script was a fun idea that unfortunately got old very quickly. This novella is short but it was too long for this experimental style. I liked the premise fair more than the actual execution.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel is kind of like the movie Scream, only in book form; it is a slasher story that is fully aware it’s a slasher story. It makes references to films within the genre, and VERY openly celebrates its tropes.

The writing style is where I’m torn, because on one hand it’s very unique and entertaining, but on the other hand it kept me from becoming fully invested in the characters. It is a highly stylized work, written in present-tense and presented as though the reader is a viewer of a movie, from the outside looking in, and complete with camera directions. For example:

‘—> swirl out, up to the bridge where the sixth graders are, and something about our angle, about our limited view- it feels like an unclaimed POV, like somebody’s watching.’

And it goes on kind of like this for ~300 pages. The style actually made the book feel more fast-paced, and I read it fairly quickly. But it also created a distant feeling, as I was not able to get inside the minds of the characters. The pace and “camera-jumping” setup also led to some confusion about plot details, and I’m still not quite clear on a few points within the story.

If I was not a fan of horror films, particularly old-school slashers, I don’t think I would have liked this book. It’s definitely an homage to a certain kind of story, and I appreciate that SGJ did something different and fun here, even if the end result didn’t completely match up with my reading preferences.

[Crystal · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those books that people will absolutely love or absolutely hate. It really comes down to the writing style. If you're looking for a straightforward story, this isn't the book for you. The format is nonlinear and written very much like a screenplay. That is why I personally LOVE this book!
I'm a huge fan of horror films (particularly 80s slashers) and this book is essential an 80s slasher in novel form. I dig in!

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fast, dizzying novel that's a slasher movie script, with players who know all the rules, and break them and rewrite them, and expose them, and like the best traditional tragedies, succumb to them.

[Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany)]

I liked the ideas here, but wasn't a fan of the execution. The format is unconventional- written like a movie more than a novel- and I found it difficult to get into, not to mention confusing at times. His most recent book My Heart Is a Chainsaw tackles similar themes but in a way I really loved.

Both are love letters to slasher films and push back on things like the final girl always being a virgin. But while Chainsaw had a character I really fell in love with and a narrative structure that sucked me in, this felt too arms-length and I had a hard time caring about anything that happened. I have been a fan of other things I've read from this author though so I will definitely continue to pick up whatever he puts out. This is an earlier book than Chainsaw and I think you can tell he's developed his ideas on this topic and how to communicate them to a wider audience. I feel like film students who are into horror might appreciate more of the detail here describing shots and editing. It was just okay for me and not one of my favorite things he's written.

[Ashley Daviau · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very, VERY rarely do I abandon a book unfinished because there’s always the chance it can turn around into something great. I tried very hard with this one because I’ve heard so many great things about it and I mean, hello, FINAL GIRLS! But the format of it just didn’t work for me and I really struggled with it. It had me so confused and I had no idea what was going on at all even almost halfway through. That’s when I decided to just let it go because it was truly making my head hurt trying to keep it all straight. The idea of the story really does sound great but I so wish it had been in another format because I’m sure I would have loved it if I had been able to grasp it.

[Amos · Rating 2 out of 5]

Started off really digging this one.....then the characters started to annoy me a lil bit...then I noticed that lately when I'd pick it up to read I'd set it right back down agro-style after only a few pages...and then I noticed that happening more and more.....untill I finally stopped fighting the feeling and just bailed...
Blurg.

Two Excitement Dampening Stars

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

After her entire homecoming court is killed by someone in a Michael Jackson mask, who becomes known as Billie Jean, Lindsay puts together a rag-tag group of students to replace them. Izzy, our main character and misfit, is one of them. Izzy loves horror and knows all the tropes of the slasher movie. Which is good, because she'll need that knowledge if she wants to survive Billie Jean.

The Last Final Girl was a fun read thar is a bit of a campy send-up of teen slasher flicks, making light of many of those tropes. Stephen Graham Jones does an excellent job of getting the reader to really root for the final girl in his slasher novels, as well as sprinkling in bits of humor too.

I really enjoyed the characters, especially Izzy. I know many disliked the way the book was written, but I quite enjoyed watching it play out like a movie, though i did struggle on occasion with what was going on. It made it super easy to imagine the characters in my head. I didn't get all the references either, but that's just because I'm more of a horror reader than watcher. Other reviews say that the audio is better, so I would give that a try if you're not meshing well with the physical copy.

[Jessica {Litnoob} · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this author and how he works a story. I love the kitchy and sometimes slap stick way that he approaches horror. I also like the simple elegance he used to sell creepy when it’s needed.

I think this book would have been five stars for me if I got every reference but there was some that went right over my head. I think I want to watch all the reference material and then reread just to get every single one of them. His books are always worth a reread.

I know some might not like the way the story is structured. But I think it was my favorite part. Once I adjusted my expectations to it, it maker my theater kid heart very happy. It was unique and made it simple to close your eyes and set that stage entirely.

[Paxton Cockrell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'd heard about this book long before I picked it up, and I thought the premise was cool so I really wanted to like it. Unfortunately, the book just wasn't put together that well. Now, I still think the premise was interesting and done a little bit differently, it could be really awesome.

So, the primary problem with The Last Final Girl, is how it was written. It's clear that Mr. Jones saw this story in film form. So the book is written in some pseudo script form with lots of lines describing camera moves and scene cuts. I wish he had gone in one way or the other and made it a full script or went with a full novel because the weird in-between that it is makes the book tedious to read through.

The other problem I had is how meta the book was. Everyone seemed hyper aware of the fact that they were in a horror story and it didn't really explain why. It got sort of tiresome that everyone seemed aware of what was going to happen next took away some of the guessing.

So overall, a great idea, jut not executed well.

[Ross Lockhart · Rating 4 out of 5]

A meta-textual homage to the slasher flicks of the 80s with an encyclopedic understanding of the genre's tropes, Stephen Graham Jones's The Last Final Girl out-references such films as Scream and Cabin in the Woods through virtuoso literary technique, cinematic jump cuts, dizzying POV shifts, buckets of blood, and a tongue planted firmly in cheek. As stylish as it is grotesque, The Last Final Girl is a campy, absurdist fright-fest, with rival final girls jockeying for survivor status, small-town kink and connectedness, football, a wrecked Halloween truck, and a deranged killer in a Michael Jackson mask. Don't wait for the (inevitable) movie! Read The Last Final Girl now, an experience this horrific tour-de-force for yourself!

[David Keaton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review is apt to be a bit bias, as this is what usually happens when readers becomes delusional enough to think a novel was written specifically for them. That's the case here though, as Mr. Jones has crafted a book so far up inside the head of a horror movie fan that its likely to read like Morse Code to a civilian. Their confusion is their loss though because something very unique is happening with this narrative, something that will likely be misinterpreted as an attempt to half-novelize a screenplay. But it only resembles a screenplay at first glance, mostly because of the clever arrows and whiplash descriptions of the next "shot." But the difference here is all the difference - what is usually lost in a screenplay format (and in a film), particularly the moves only a novel can make up, down, and all around the action (and up in everyone's heads, of course), can now be relished instead of distilled, making this not quite screenplay, not quite novel, but a new hybrid machine hand-tooled for maximum enjoyment by a specific audience. The premise, a gathering of familiar names, "Jamie (Lee Curtis)," "Ripley," "Crystal (B)lake," etc., reminders of famous "last final girls" who should have earned the right to finally relax after surviving their respective horror movies, now in danger of being picked off by a nut in a Whacko Jacko mask, is just as fun as Jones' previous Zombie Bake-Off (also put out by Lazy Fascist), and just as smart and subversive as that book. Things get twistier, and in spite of the positively Aztec levels of bloody sacrifice, what Jones would never dream of sacrificing are the expectations of any good horror show. The author is so confident in his knowledge of horror tropes that he never subverts those expectations when it comes time to satisfy. It's also crammed with movie references until the quips are spilling out its mouth, and has a special prize at the bottom of the box for Michael Martin Murphey "Wildfire" fans (actually this tribute got shook to the top of the cereal box). This book is a love letter to slasher cinema, to doomed Last Final Girls everywhere, and to every boy or girl who loved them enough to just eat their popcorn and enjoy watching them die.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Last Final Girl is a teen slasher with some saucy satire. The book oozes sexuality and is brimming with brutality; all the teenage women are attractive, while the the antagonist is pure typecast teen horror movie.

Sure there's not a lot of depth but that's not what you pay for - load up the pop corn and don't answer the phone at night.

The unique script storytelling methodology contributes to the distinctly b-grade feel which makes the Scream/I Know What You Did Last Summer-like spoof all the more alluring for fans of the slasher sub genre.

And that ending...formulaic but fun!

My rating: 4/5 stars.

[Amy Noelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the teen slasher storyline but I did NOT enjoy it told in screenplay format. I felt very disconnected from the characters and some of the scenes were really confusing for me to try to picture and follow along with.

[Justin Chen · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars

An effective love letter to slasher films, even if it can be quite impenetrable at times. Stephen Graham Jones has always had a very distinct writing style, and The Last Final Girl might be the most abstruse I've read from him yet; overall this was a roller coaster of an experience — there were parts I found extremely effective and utterly unique, but they were matched by an equal amount of scenes where I had no idea what was happening.

After a quick browse at reviews, it looks like I'm in the minority who actually appreciates the storyboard-like writing style. The extreme fragmentation, breakdown of camera shots, and flippant POV switches can be disorienting, but it does establish a vivid imagery, successfully conveying a cinematic feel — all the kill sequences (which is the heart of a good slasher) are positively visceral and gory, I rarely wince when reading horror, but I did during this.

Meta is the name of the game for The Last Final Girl, and it can be borderline obnoxious; like being thrown into a conversation with die-hard fans, and not knowing any of their reference points. The sheer amount of deep-cut slasher reference can be exhausting: I chuckled when a character winkingly spoke a sentence made up of multiple 80s film titles, but there were also moments where I read pages knowing I didn't have the knowledge to really 'get' it.

Overall, I'm here for the vibe rather than substance; I appreciate The Last Final Girl not watering down its content for the general public, at the same time it can be defeating knowing I was not educated enough on the subject to grasp all the Easter eggs. In retrospect, My Heart Is a Chainsaw feels like a more accessible mainstream iteration featuring many of the same elements (a female protagonists well-versed in slasher rules while being an atypical final girl).

[Leo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've enjoyed most of his works before this. Stephen Graham Jones does know how to tell a story, the issue with this one is that I quickly became bored of the "last final girl" trope. Not my favorite to begin with and I quickly lost interest as its not something that gives me thrills to read

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 rounded up to 4
This is a fun, cheeky little read. It’s written like a screenplay, which is novel, but can get a little tedious at times and for me made it harder to connect with the characters. Overall, it’s fast-paced, predictable but interesting, and funny because it doesn’t take itself too seriously. If you enjoy a tongue-in-cheek story that leans toward dark humor, I recommend giving this book a try.

I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Eric G. Dove. Mr. Dove did a spot-on job reading this story and delivering the lines of each character with a unique personality. It was like sitting at a table-read with a bunch of actors preparing to shoot a campy slasher flick!

[Rechan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I should have liked this, but the author made it unbearable to enjoy.

The first stumbling block is the text's presented. Little arrows, camera direction such as 'we pan over/zoom in, from character X's POV' - it reads like a screenplay with an extra sentence of description. Not only is it jarring, but it leaps around so much with jumpcuts that anyone without ADHD is going to get whiplash. Even more confusingly, you will have two characters' dialogue in the same paragraph. But fine, let's just chock that up to style.

The author then goes to break the fourth wall so thoroughly as to directly speak to the audience. Here's some passages:

What matters, though, is that Izzy, she’s stood up for Lindsay, then for Crystal. Completely not in keeping with what we know about her.

The way this is framed, too, there’s this big empty space over his shoulder, so that we’re holding our breaths (but grinning, be-cause he’s so going to deserve it), and jump hard when, instead of some shape stepping into the sheriff’s space, the garage door of Izzy’s house starts

Ben mumbles, and nods to himself, pushes hard away from the concrete with his feet so he can situate himself on the surface properly: arms crossed over his chest grave style, so we’re all holding our breath for him, don’t want a kid to die.

“Boop, boop, boop,” she says, pinching the windows shut with her fingers, some personal game we don’t know anything about. It’s enough to steady

Why would you do that? Might as well say "We should be worried about the killer. We should be getting tense. We should be scared now."

Also, one character is named Crystal Blake, which is obviously a reference to Camp Crystal Lake, another is Mandy Kane (Mandy Lane). That's acceptable. But then the author does this:

Close on the business card: “Jamie Curtis, Telegraph,” and the usual email addresses and phone numbers and faxes, all the area codes obscured enough we can’t really guess at a state.

“Tell me your middle name’s Lee,” she says to him, tucking the card into her bra so that most of the card’s still out in the open.

“And my brother’s Michael , yeah,” Jamie says.

If you're going to give the characters these names, they shouldn't acknowledge them unless the whole plot is a conspiracy or questioning reality. A subtle wink to the audience is fine. Here it's so blatant it comes off more as the author saying, "See what I did there?" The book is so self-aware I expected a character to bump into the camera.

You know that part of the horror movie where it's introducing the main cast and their young adult drama BS? The part where you want to hurry so we can get back to the slashing? That's 47% of the book. The plot here often goes nowhere, drags on unnecessarily, or creates plot threads that the book never goes back to. Worst of all, it lacks tension and there's barely any buildup at all. W're told that Lindsay is surrounding herself with Final Girls but only two girls are given detail as to how they're Final Girls. So if the plot's worn thin and the writing is choppy at best, what about the characters?

The main character Izzy and her friend Brittney spend 90% of the novel being every 80s-90s teen movie main characters - snarky, witty and rebellious. However, all their dialog, all of it, is smarmy, self-aware banter. That gets old after page 90. A horror movie can get away with stock characters because most of it is spent with them cowering and running, but when the focus is on those characters for 200 pages, that void needs to be filled with something other than constant hollow movie references. Prime example:

“Unless it does turn out to be you, of course,” Izzy adds. “Then I’ll spit on your grave myself. Take you to the last house on the left just before dawn.”

The author can't even describe things without referencing pop culture - 'Oprahing her eyes' 'Spocking her hand' 'Uses his Morpheus fingers to invite' 'Velociraptoring up on the counter'. One character's complete description is just 'Tony Todd'. After describing the characters as Robert Englund and Tony Todd, and I am not joking, the next line is "The Bulldogs' head coach is Freddy Kreuger, their assistant coach the Candyman." Easter eggs are one thing, but this is spoonfeeding. Why even bother describing anything, just tell the story only by stringing together movie quotes and actor names for nouns and verbs.

I came away from this book insulted as a horror fan, a movie fan in general, and finally as a reader. What really frustrates me is that all this self-congratulating fanservice buries some good stuff. When the action starts it gets good. There's a sequence that had me turning pages, desperate to find out what happens next, in part because it's so damn unique and inventive. The buildup is excellent, the tension at the last part of the book is excellent, the reveals are well done. There is obvious talent here. But it's so thick with pure fanservice desperately passed off and hyped as slick, clever, stylish homage.

It was a real struggle not to give this one star, but it gets two here because of the parts that are good.

[Alex | | findingmontauk1 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am always going to read anything and everything slasher related and final girl related. It's just my thing! So when I saw Stephen Graham Jones had put something together I knew I had to have it.

SGJ writes this book as if you are watching a movie. The book tells you when the scene changes, it tells you when the camera changes focus, etc. It does it in a way that is unique but does take some time to get used to. It's like we are watching what we are reading - I promise that will make a lot more sense once you open this one and check it out for yourself! This format and execution did not work for me as a whole, but I know that others have found it worked for them quite well.

I really enjoyed the characters and the premise of this book. A group of final girls? One to rule them all!? Yes! This book is filled with witty banter and sassy comebacks... and it throws in a lot of horror tropes and pop culture references as well that many will enjoy being able to say, "Yep! I know what that's referring to!"

3.5 rounded up for Goodreads!

[Steph ✨ · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5 stars. I was not a fan of this. The narrative was confusing and all over the place and I think there was too much going on. I love a good slasher but this tried to do too much!

[Roxie Voorhees · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Stupid girls run upstairs, stupid girls run upstairs," she's saying to herself, turning to pull Ben with her up the aluminum steps, Billie Jean just feet behind them.
Last Final Girl
Stephen Graham Jones

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Written like a faux movie script with the vast majority dialogue and full of pop culture references from the 80s slasher film era, Last Final Girl takes us on a wild ride.

Remember the rules to follow if you find yourself stuck in a horror movie. (See How to Survive a Horror Movie by Seth Grahame-Smith)