The Final Women by Pardeep Aujla

Formats: Digital

Publisher: Self-Published

Genre: Demon, Killer/Slasher, Occult

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Black main character, Latina main character, Vietnamese main character, lesbian main character

Content Warnings: Alcohol Abuse, Amputation, Bullying, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Gore, Homophobia, Mental Illness, Racism, Self-Harm, Sexism, Suicide, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence (Highlight to view)

Blurb:

The mass murdering Phantom of Haven Cove is dead. For the one who killed him, however, life has never been the same. How do you return to normality after facing such a monster? How do you live when consumed by guilt, anger, fear, and denial? How do you connect with others when no one understands what you’ve been through? But there are others... Final girls of their own Haven Cove massacres. And now, thirty years later, they must all face a new question... What do you do when the killer returns?

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

What happens when final girls grow up? It depends how they deal with the trauma of what happened to them the night they faced off with the masked killer, Silas Crowe. If you’re Nell James, you grow up to become a lonely and agoraphobic author who tries to turn the worst thing that ever happened to her-- watching her friends get murdered one by one--into financial gain. If you’re Josie Jedford, you numb your fear with drugs. Or you could become a paranoid survivalist like Ana Gómez who transforms her badly burned body into a living weapon. Even Cassie Phong, who seems to have the perfect life what with her wealthy husband and two children, can’t escape the PTSD she developed the night she faced off with Silas Crowe. Each woman has done her best to put the past behind them, believing Crowe to be dead once and for all. That is until Camp Haven Cove reopens and a new group of teenagers goes missing. Nell realizes that Silas Crowe never died, and never will unless she, and the other three former final girls find a way to deal with him once and for all. Now well into their forties the four final woman team up to put a stop to the killings once and for all.

Slasher heroines are almost exclusively young women: teens and twenty somethings with bare breasts and flat stomachs (they’re always conventionally attractive) enjoying the prime of their lives through sex, drugs and drinking. Any woman above the age of thirty is either a mother or a side character, and if she has a few gray hairs she’s relegated to the role of a frightful hag. But as nostalgia for horror of the 80’s and 90’s breathes new life into horror franchises, Hollywood is doing something new. Instead of rebooting and recasting their heroines, they’re allowing them to grow up from Final Girls into Final Women. Sidney Prescott (Scream), Laurie Strode (Halloween), and Sally Hardesty (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) all recently reprised their roles in their respective franchises as badass heroines over the age of forty. And as someone who will soon be saying goodbye to my thirties, it’s refreshing to see older women get their time in the slasher spotlight, and that’s one of the things I liked best about The Final Women.  Nell, Josie, Ana, and Cassie are all approaching fifty, but they all get to be the heroes of the story, and I found them much more relatable then horny, drunk teens in the woods. They’re also not written for the male gaze, which is refreshing.

Another thing I liked about the book was Aujla’s realistic depiction of PTSD. None of the women escaped Silas unscathed, they each bear their own physical and mental scars, as one would expect from anyone going up against a slasher. Nell displays avoidance of people and places that remind her of her traumatic event and might trigger a flashback. Cassie and Josie both develop substance abuse problems, alcohol and drugs respectively, a common comorbidity for people with PTSD. Ana is prone to angry outbursts and aggressive behavior and is hypervigilant. All the women struggle with nightmares and flashbacks. It’s refreshing to see a slasher actually deal with mental health and the aftermath of a traumatic event (something we’re starting to see in more recent film sequels). I genuinely cared about all the main characters, something that rarely happens in horror fiction, and I was scared to see any of them get hurt or killed. Aujla just writes them so well! It’s sweet to see these women from different walks of life bond and draw strength from each other.

The Final Women was fun in a way the best 80’s slashers are. Gory, over the top, and wickedly funny. I absolutely devoured it as I found both the story and the characters enthralling. It draws on classic horror tropes while still being wholly unique. If you’re a fan of slashers you’ll definitely want to check this one out.