Not Your Final Girl by Mikayla Randolph review: A slasher that can’t outrun its own past

Seven years after a prom night tragedy, a group of former friends reunites at a lakeside cabin—and quickly proves that time hasn’t made them wiser, kinder, or even remotely interested in leaving the past behind.

In Not Your Final Girl, Mikayla Randolph builds a setup that feels immediately familiar: estranged high school friends, a remote cabin with no cell service, and a long-simmering grudge waiting to boil over. Darcy, weighed down by guilt and depression, and Ashley, whose controlling cruelty defines nearly every interaction, anchor the story’s emotional center—if it can be called that. Around them is a cast of characters who, quite frankly, seem to actively dislike one another. Trust is nonexistent, and affection feels like an afterthought.

That raises the first—and most persistent—question: why are they here at all? The novel frames the reunion as a chance to move forward, but everything about these characters suggests the opposite. They are stuck, circling the same old dynamics, drawn back not by healing but by habit. It’s the kind of gathering many readers might instinctively decline; the sense that these people peaked in high school—or never escaped it—hangs over every interaction.

Once the violence begins, the book settles into its identity as a self-aware slasher. The characters openly discuss horror tropes, including the idea of the “final girl,” and the narrative leans into that meta commentary. In those moments, the novel is at its most confident. It understands the genre it’s playing in and isn’t afraid to acknowledge the rules.

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Where things become murkier is in its attempt to position itself as a reimagining of Tess of the D’Urbervilles. That connection lives almost entirely in the backstory, and even there it feels more like an overlay than an organic foundation. The present-day narrative—a straightforward, increasingly bloody survival story—never fully integrates those literary ambitions. Instead, the reference lingers awkwardly, raising expectations the book doesn’t quite meet.

The same can be said for the novel’s feminist framing. While marketed as a story fueled by female rage, the execution feels uneven. The themes are stated more often than they are meaningfully developed, giving parts of the book a preachy edge rather than something that grows naturally out of character or plot. There’s a sharper, more compelling version of this story that leans fully into its slasher instincts without trying to carry additional thematic weight it isn’t prepared to sustain.

That said, readers who enjoy contained, high-tension horror with morally messy characters may still find something to latch onto here. The paranoia, the unraveling alliances, and the sense that anyone could be next all deliver on the genre’s core promise. But for a novel that sets out to challenge and redefine the idea of the “final girl,” it ultimately plays things safer—and more predictably—than it seems to realize.

Do you think a story like this needs likable characters to succeed, or can distrust and dislike actually enhance the tension—and did it work for you here?

An advance reader copy of this book (ARC) was provided to me by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Related Content

• Author interview: Mikayla Randolph is NOT Your Final Girl (The Madhouse Review)
• Women in horror: These ladies write the books that keep me up at night (Feminist Book Club)
• Lindy Ryan on Slashers, Pink Horror, and the Rise of Violent Fiction by Women (CrimeReads)
• Why midlife women are turning to horror (The Shift)

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Now that Jack has been forced to reflect on everything he has to lose, he resolves to do better. He’s determined to spend more time at home with his family and repair the relationships that have suffered over the years while he’s been so focused on work. But as Callie’s behavior becomes increasingly bizarre, Jack realizes he has a lot more room to improve than he realized – and it might be too late to save his daughter after all.

For fans of We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Push, and Baby Teeth.