As I transition away from my serial killer obsession and into the world of cults, I decided to read one final book: The Surviving Girls by Katee Robert. I am a huge Katee Robert fan, but mostly for the Dark Olympus series. I didn’t even know she had this series of procedural romance (is that a genre? It’s what I’m calling it) but it includes one novel about a cult (which I’ve just started) and another about a serial killer (which I just finished).
First things first — I can’t say this book was about a serial killer. The killer is called a serial killer throughout, but the actual murders fit either a mass murderer or spree murderer. The book even has the characters debating this, and mentioned that the intimacy of the murders (stabbing and strangulation, with sexual assault) make the murderer’s behavior more like that of a serial killer. It’s debatable. But since I had one other spree killer book in here (There’s Someone Inside Your House) I don’t feel too bad about including this. Plus, I wanted to take a moment to talk about the modern obsession with the final girl.
The Final Girl(s)
The final girl has changed over the years. Once upon a time, the final girl was always the pure girl who didn’t have sex or do drugs. She was brought down to level of the serial killer through one impure choice — usually her first sexual encounter — which begins the murders. But, because she is so pure and (occasionally) resourceful, she escapes, sometimes defeating the killer while other times just evading him. The final girl ended up being the surviving voice who could tell the story, and often the thread that could connect sequels to the source material. She was quite convenient when it came to storytelling, but the story was rarely hers.
Originally, final girls were included in slasher films not as titillation for male viewers, but to draw female viewers into the theater. Over the years, that exploitation of the female scream bred an entire sub-genre: the final girls genre. This genre focuses in on the final girl’s power and ingenuity. She survives not because of luck or destiny, but because of her own smarts and strength. Eventually, the genre moved all around the moments that used to be drawn as story. No longer was the massacre the only important image. After became just as important. We got stories about healing. We got stories about moving on. We also got a lot more sequels — many sequels without a first story. That’s where The Surviving Girls falls. It is a story of the second spree murders that two very traumatized women have already survived once.
Robert does an excellent job of fleshing out both of the survivors in The Surviving Girls, and I fully appreciate that there are two contrasting survivors, dealing with the trauma of the first massacre in very different ways. I think the choice to have two survivors not only takes the pressure off the sole survivor to be a larger-than-life hero, but also shows more deeply that there are so many different ways we can react to a traumatic event. I love their co-dependent relationship that shouldn’t work but does, each one pulling the other back from the precipice when they need it most. There are plenty of books out there with a similar trope: woman who survived one serial killer being targeted by a copy cat (or the same killer), and plenty of them are done okay or even well. I think having the friendship at the core of this book rather than the romance allows it to shine in a unique way a lot of other books don’t explore.
The Cop-Adjacent Heroine
You probably know this is my least favorite trope: the cop-adjacent heroine. She’s rarely a cop herself… but she’s somehow related to the profession. A reporter. A coroner. A doctor. A psychologist. I’m not sure why this annoys me. Perhaps I’d rather have the heroine just be the cop, and maybe I don’t like procedurals enough to be so close to them. But I didn’t mind this one. Lei trains dogs to hunt cadavers. Her transition to this profession makes sense to her storyline — a way to pay penance for her guilt in the sorority row murders while not actually getting involved in hunting serial killers. It feels realistic and gets the benefit of two lovely service dogs in the book. It’s still far from my favorite, but I didn’t hate it.
Just Enough Spice
Coming from Robert’s erotica, I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into. If you know my writing, you know I have no issue including erotic scenes in a serial killer book. However, I find a lot of the serial killer romance I read feels like two different books — the romance between the heroine and hero and the hunt for the killer. This one blended the two well enough, emphasizing the distraction the attraction caused and even allowing a few missteps because of the attraction while still managing to fit in a few spicy scenes.
Overall, I wouldn’t say this book was groundbreaking in the genre, but it was a fun, enjoyable read. I do think it caps off the evolution of serial killer books.
The monster as other –> the human as a monster –> the killer’s mind/the other as self –> the procedural from every angle –> the psychologist as the mirror of the killer –> the final girl –> the empowered woman
Are all serial killer novels odes to the empowered woman nowadays? No. But there are a lot that lean that way coming out, many focusing on the victims or the heroes rather than the killers themselves. In many ways, this is comforting and refreshing. It feels good, and I’m glad these books exist. At the same time, I love a dark thing that gets into the killers mind and takes me places I’m uncomfortable, and I hope those books aren’t going anywhere, either.
