If you've watched any amount of horror, you've almost definitely encountered a final girl: the girl who, after all her friends have been picked off by whatever slasher or evil entity has terrorized them, defeats the Big Bad in a climactic face-off that leaves her bloodied and traumatized, but triumphant.
The origins of the trope are up for debate, though Sally Hardesty from 1974's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is often credited as the first final girl (and Texas Chainsaw as the first slasher movie).
While the final girl trope is as old as the slasher sub-genre itself in film, it is less strongly associated with horror literature.
However, as awareness of the trope within the horror community has grown and authors have increasingly sought to subvert the audience's expectations of the genre, a slew of books have been written in the past decade that explicitly feature final girls.
No matter what approach a book takes, though, one thing is for certain: final girls are not to be messed with.
From propulsive horror-thrillers to meta-horror where the characters are aware of their status as final girls, these final girl horror books do everything from exemplify the final girl trope to playfully undermine it.
My Heart is a Chainsaw
Jones is fascinated by the final girl trope, and while The Last Final Girl is proof of that, it’s not the only book of his that plays with and even undermines this slasher-film staple.
A Bram Stoker Award winner, My Heart Is a Chainsaw tells the story of Jade Daniels, a half–Native American social pariah who uses horror movies as an escape from the harsh reality of her abusive father and absent mother.
The horror comes to Jade’s town when a grisly murder is committed, then another, and while the rest of the town is thrown into chaos, Jade has seen enough horror movies to know exactly how this story will play out.
My Heart Is a Chainsaw is a story about trauma, not only that of Jade herself, but of an entire people beleaguered by the effects of colonization, gentrification, and displacement.
Yet it is also a story of perseverance and hope in the face of that trauma.
Clown in a Cornfield
When Quinn Maybrook and her father moved to the small town of Kettle Springs for a new start, Quinn expected to be bored out of her mind. Instead, she’s scared for her life.
Ever since the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory shut down, Kettle Springs has become divided between the adults, who want to return the town to its former glory, and the kids, who want to grow up, have fun, and get out.
The generational divide turns deadly when Frendo, the creepy clown mascot of Baypen, turns homicidal and starts killing the rotten kids who live there. Looks like Quinn picked a bad time to move…
You're Not Supposed to Die Tonight
Perfect for fans of Fear Street, this book follows Charity at the end of her dream summer job playing the “final girl” at Camp Mirror Lake.
After all, if your summer camp was the site of a classic horror movie, wouldn’t you charge guests to see its scariest scenes reenacted there, too?
On the last weekend of the season, strange things start to happen. Charity’s co-workers begin disappearing, and one of them turns up dead—for real.
Suddenly, Charity might find herself in the role of an actual final girl, as she and her girlfriend Bezi try to survive the night. As they soon discover, the killer’s identity isn’t the only secret hidden at Camp Mirror Lake…
There's No Way I'd Die First
No one knows horror more than movie buff Noelle Layne, which is why she’s sure her Halloween party will be the event of the year.
She has a lot riding on it, too—some of the most popular people at her school will be there, including gorgeous singer-songwriter Archer Mitchell.
Noelle has pulled out all the stops, starting the night off with a game of tag where a hired It clown is, well, “it.” But when he kills one of the students with a real ax, it becomes all too clear that this clown is not there to play.
Fortunately, neither is Noelle, and she’s watched enough horror movies to know she has what it takes to be a final girl. She just hopes she’s right.
Final Girls
When college student Quincy Carpenter returns the lone survivor of a vacation-turned-massacre with her friends, she unwittingly joins “The Final Girls”—a name given by the press to girls that have survived similar catastrophes.
Quincy never had any interest in that label, and ten years later, she’s happy to say she’s put it behind her completely. She even managed to make a pretty nice life for herself.
That is, until one of the Final Girls turns up dead in her bathtub, and another, Sam, turns up at Quincy’s door.
Quincy has blocked out the events of that fateful night ten years ago, but if she wants to stay alive, remembering what happened will only be the beginning…
The Final Girl Support Group
Final girls may survive the massacre, but once the smoke has cleared and the blood is scrubbed away, they are still left with their own trauma to deal with.
That’s why, for the past decade, Lynnette Tarkington and four other real-life final girls have been meeting for a support group.
Lynette and her fellow final girls have worked hard to move on from the lived nightmares, but when one of the girls goes missing, they have the terrifying realization that their nightmares are far from over.
Good thing final girls are always up to the challenge.
The Night Shift: A Novel
On New Year's Eve 1999, the world was predicted to end. For three teenagers working at a New Jersey Blockbuster, it did, and the lone survivor made it out far from unscathed. The suspect, one of the victim’s boyfriends, escaped and disappeared.
Fifteen years later, more teenagers are attacked at an ice cream parlor in the same town. In the investigation that ensues, the lives of three people are irrevocably intertwined: the detective on the current case, the brother of the 1999 massacre’s prime suspect, and the girl who survived the original tragedy.
Are these two murder sprees connected somehow? Where is the original suspect now? And can the lone survivor overcome her trauma to help Detective Keller find the killer before he strikes again?
The Last Girls Standing
Sloan and Cherry are inseparable—after all, they were final girls together. When a group of masked men with machetes attacked their summer camp, they were the lone survivors.
Cherry is the only person who understands Sloan, and vice versa…until new evidence about that fateful night and the ritual it was part of throw Cherry’s story into doubt.
Did Cherry know more about what happened that night than she let on? Could she even be responsible? Is Sloan just paranoid? And, most importantly: are the killers still after her?
Black-Eyed Susans
Sixteen-year-old Tessa wakes up in a Texas field to find herself covered in bones, and above that, a layer of wildflowers. The lone surviving “Black-Eyed Susan,” as the press dubbed the victims, Tessa’s testimony puts a man on death row.
Twenty years later, Tessa, an artist and single mother, has managed to move on. But when freshly planted black-eyed susans appear outside her bedroom window, the thought that keeps Tessa up at night becomes all too real: she may have convicted the wrong man, and the real killer is still out there.
Tessa turns to lawyers to help exonerate the man on death row, but the flowers aren’t enough evidence, and if Tessa can’t summon up more details of that fateful day, she just may send an innocent man today.
What her lawyers don’t realize is that Tessa has her own reasons for not digging up those memories, reasons that go beyond a trauma response.
Reasons that may be better off buried beneath the wildflowers.
