THE NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER “If you liked Gone Girl, you’ll like this.”—Stephen King Ten years ago, six friends went on vacation. One made it out alive…. In that instant, college student Quincy Carpenter became a member of a very exclusive club—a group of survivors the press dubbed “The Final Girls”: Lisa, who lost nine sorority sisters to a college dropout’s knife; Sam, who … to a college dropout’s knife; Sam, who endured the Sack Man during her shift at the Nightlight Inn; and now Quincy, who ran bleeding through the woods to escape the massacre at Pine Cottage. Despite the media’s attempts, the three girls have never met.
Now, Quincy is doing well—maybe even great, thanks to her Xanax prescription. She has a caring almost-fiancé; a popular baking blog; a beautiful apartment; and a therapeutic presence in Coop, the police officer who saved her life. Her mind won’t let her recall the events of that night; the past is in the past…until the first Final Girl is found dead in her bathtub and the second Final Girl appears on Quincy’s doorstep.
Blowing through Quincy’s life like a hurricane, Sam seems intent on making her relive the trauma of her ordeal. When disturbing details about Lisa’s death emerge, Quincy desperately tries to unravel Sam’s truths from her lies while evading both the police and bloodthirsty reporters. Quincy knows that in order to survive she has to remember what really happened at Pine Cottage.
Because the only thing worse than being a Final Girl is being a dead one.
WINNER OF THE 2018 INTERNATIONAL THRILLER WRITERS AWARD FOR BEST HARDCOVER NOVEL
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Any horror movie fan is familiar with the “final girl” trope. The one girl who makes it out alive from the massacre going on in the movie. Usually, she ends up killing the killer. This book looks at what life is like for the “final girl” after she is rescued and safe. Having to deal with the fame, and the constant media presence, people who just want a piece of her.
Quincy is a final girl, having survived a massacre at an isolated cabin in the woods. Lisa and Sam are also final girls, and the press keeps trying to lump all three of them together. Quincy is against meeting them, until she hears about Lisa’s death. Initially thought of as suicide, there is something suspicious about her death. And something suspicious about Sam, who shows up on Quincy’s doorstep shortly after Lisa dies.
Quincy does not remember most of what happened to her the night she and her friends were attacked. But she is unwillingly drawn into finding out what happened to Lisa, and what really happened to her that night in the woods.
This book was very exciting. The action was non stop and I was always interested in what was going to happen next. The story of Quincy in the cabin is parceled out slowly over the course of the book. By the end, we know the truth and so does Quincy. The ending was a real WTF moment for me. I did not see it coming, and I am not sure how I feel about it.
I loved seeing what happens to these women after the initial violence is over. The psychological damage is profound, yet they try to get on with just living a normal life. I enjoyed reading this book very much. 4 1/2 stars out of 5!
I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.
You know all those slasher movies, where a group of teens are stalked by some crazed killer and when everything drills down to a close, there’s only one person remaining? That’s the idea behind Final Girls.
In this case, Quincy Carpenter is the “final girl” of Pine Cottage. The sole survivor of a grisly night when of her friends were butchered in the woods. Ten years later, she has her life almost back on track, when Sam, another final girl shows up on her doorstep. The plot quickly gets twisty. While I thought the book was a little slow in getting started, it’s a page-turner once Quincy and Sam begin interacting. Riley Sager weaves layers of mystery, including plenty of threads that lead the reader astray for several surprises at the end.
Suspenseful, tense and satisfying. A recommended read!
Part psychological thriller, part homage to slasher flicks and film noir, Final Girls has a little bit of everything: a suspicious death, a damaged heroine, an unwelcome guest who trades in secrets, and not a single character you can trust. Plenty of nail-biting fun!
I’ve read a lot of psychological thrillers this year, and it’s pretty rare that I’m surprised. I can definitively say, Final Girls surprised me again and again. Just when I thought I had it figured out, the plot twisted again. The characterization felt real, the anxiety and fear visceral. The structure was a brilliant way of juxtaposing her memories. And that final twist! The suspense was so high I couldn’t put the book down!
This is my favorite read of the year (yes I know it’s still January but that doesn’t negate that its true). This book has so many twists and turns it is impossible to put down. Some of the twists, I saw coming and yet, now that I think about it, I feel like maybe I was supposed to see them so that I wouldn’t see the BIG one. I don’t want to give too much away so I won’t get into details. I listened to the audiobook and I found myself unable to turn it off at night because I wanted to know what happened next. Even a week later, this book is still with me. A great psychological thriller.
Let me start by saying I do NOT like horror movies. Never have, never will. I don’t like the gory, gross, vivid depictions of violence. But, weirdly, I have always enjoyed this type of fiction… And equally weirdly, my imagination is WAY more vivid than any movie I’ve ever seen – which means that I’ve *seen* more disturbing imagery in my head than I ever have on a screen, large or small. As a result, I’ve never been able to understand my absolute and utter refusal to watch horror movies. After reading Riley Sagar’s latest, I think I have started to catch a glimpse of part of the reason why: the concept of the Final Girl.
For those who aren’t in the know, the Final Girl is the last man standing in your (stereo)typical horror story. The one who gets away. The girl who lives. The one who, despite all odds, sees another day. They’re the Disney Princesses of horror – the one-in-a-million story that ends well. But, does it really end well for these “survivors”? Or, as is more than imaginable for the DPs and anyone who has ever asked “but what happens next??” (a phenomenon of curiosity evidenced by the proliferation of the genre of fairy-tale retellings and continuations), is there maybe more to the story than we think, with happy endings never truly happy – or endings?
In Final Girls, Sagar explores this idea in great depth – and in reading this tale, I came to realize that one of the things I’ve always found most disturbing in horror movies (as in Disney movies, come to think of it) is the randomness of things. One girl gets hack-sawed; one walks away. One girl marries a prince; the other lives a life of servitude. There are elements of “she deserved it” in both genres – the pretty, spunky, worthy girl usually (but not always) manages to pull through. The selfish, stupid, silly ones usually (but not always) bite it. But life – and personality – is infinitely more complex than that, and that’s one of the things that always frustrated me in the movies but which books, with their ability to give us much better glimpses behind the curtain of personality and motivation, allow the opportunity to work-around.
Enter Final Girls, the book.
This was a very engaging tale of violence and secrets and fear and loathing, and a psychological analysis of what it means to survive – all wrapped in a narrative that felt like a movie but read like a book. The characters are infinitely more real than horror movie figures, even when they are described almost literally as such. The layered motivations and hidden agendas were a large part of what made this so interesting a read. Sure, there’s also seat-of-your-pants action and edge of that self-same seat suspense – I expected that. But what I didn’t expect was how much it made me think about women and fear and the impact of the latter on the lives of the former – even the ones who have not suffered from even a fraction of the violence that Quincy and Sam have… As Quincy attempts to pull her life back into some semblance of rationality and order, her efforts are often as difficult to *watch* as the violent flashbacks. This is a girl who is almost literally hanging by a thread, and her story is a study in self-control that I found thoroughly plausible. Sam is a delightfully dark enigma from her first appearances, and as her role shifts and shudders throughout, only becomes more so. The motivations of these women are fascinating to read and anticipate, and that anticipation definitely contributes to the overall eerie theme of the novel. There’s more here than meets the eye, and the ending delivers a one-two punch in that direction that I thoroughly enjoyed and didn’t entirely anticipate.
I would definitely NOT be able to watch this movie, but I thoroughly enjoyed my trip down the rabbit hole of the book!
This was the epitome of a page-turner. I literally couldn’t put it down. Aside from a slight annoyance with the main character for constantly hanging with girlfriends who so easily manipulate her, I really liked it.
FINAL GIRLS by Riley Sager is right up my wheelhouse since I am the kind of guy who read MEN, WOMEN, AND CHAINSAWS by Carol J. Clover for the intellectual stimulating discussion of the slasher movie with not a trace of irony. The premise of the novel is a simple and intriguing one: what if a typical slasher movie plot “really” happened? Well, the Final Girl survivors would be traumatized as well as media sensations.
Quincy Carpenter, a nice reference to Quincy Harker and John Carpenter probably, is the survivor of a camp ground massacre in her college years. A twisted maniac went on a rampage and murdered all of her friends, leaving her as the sole one to escape. It’s been ten years and she is a baking vlogger with an apartment she pays for with money from a number of lawsuits filed on her behalf. She’s an emotional mess kept going by Xanax and grape soda but a fairly realistic model of a trauma survivor.
Quincy just wants to pretend that her life is fine and she’s moved past her horrific ordeal but this is impossible due to the inability to fully confront it. Quincy doesn’t remember what happened for an hour of events and the media enjoyed bringing it up repeatedly. Not only was her ordeal similar to a horror movie but she and the other two “Final Girls” who suffered similar experiences are conventionally beautiful women who are perfect for generating cheap ratings.
Quincy’s faux-perfect life takes a downturn when Lisa, the strongest of the Final Girls, seemingly commits suicide. This results in the other Final Girl, Samantha Boyd, coming to visit Quincy in New York. Quickly, events start to spiral out of control as Samantha repeatedly tries to trigger Quincy’s long-suppressed rage. Was Lisa’s suicide really that and why does Sam want to force Quincy to remember what really happened that night?
The book is entertaining for about 90% of its page count but doesn’t quite manage to successfully land. The best part of the book is following Quincy through her daily routine and how she’s adjusted to being a survivor of a horror movie in “real life.” I also enjoyed the flashbacks to the Pinewood Cottage massacre even if they’re a deliberately cliche (camp ground, Indian burial ground, insane asylum). The final answer to the mystery is actually more cliche than all of the invoked tropes and I wish the author had gone with a more original twist.
Fans expecting a book that reads like a slasher pic are going to be disappointed as this is mostly a psychological horror piece. Quincy is badly damaged by her experience while simultaneously irritated with how everyone treats her like a fragile piece of china. I like her relationship with Samantha and was interested in seeing them develop a friendship that puts a wedge in her relationship with her boyfriend. I was a bit reminded of the Anna Kendrick/Blake Lively movie, A Simple Favor, that had similar characters to Quincy and Samantha but the roles reversed.
I think the biggest problem of the ending is the fact that it doesn’t really tie into the rest of the book’s themes. Much of the book is about how there’s no such thing as a “Final Girl” and that it’s a media created moniker to cover up a traumatizing event. One of the other characters suffered horrific child abuse and killer her attacker but was labeled a monster because, presumably, it wasn’t Hollywood-esque enough a premise. Then the ending introduces a villain straight out of Friday the 13th: A New Beginning and we’re meant to treat her Final Girl status seriously.
Still, I enjoyed reading the book and if you’re a fan of 80s horror films then you’ll enjoy most of the references even if they strain credulity that there’s been three or four incidents that perfectly mirror a typical horror movie, complete with beautiful survivors. Then again, we’re living in a time with spree killers so what do I know.
This was boring till about the last 50 pages, Sager’s other books are so much better.
I absolutely loved everything about Riley Sager’s FINAL GIRLS. Not only is it a fast-paced, suspenseful read with great twists, but the writing is pitch-perfect. My highest recommendation.
This is the kind of book you can read over and over and keep catching things you missed. The suspense will keep you on the edge of your seat and make you wonder what is really going on. I love this book and it is the first thing I would recommend to someone looking for a suspenseful read.
The writing is amazing and the story is fantastic. Overall 5/5!
Kept my attention
Kept me on the edge of my seat with some shocking twists I didn’t see coming. Highly recommend!
The last quarter of the book really surprised me. Well done.
I had a hard time believing that Quincy would get herself into the situations she did when another “final girl” dared her to do so. Thus, the storyline—which might have been compelling with a different main character—seemed close to unbelievable.
This is a new author for me but I plan on reading many more of his books. This was an outstanding novel! Wonderful articulation along with characters that seem like your next door neighbor. Plus an unexpected ending!!!! Enjoy!
Holyyyyyy crappppp.
What a ride. I’m seriously more and more impressed with Riley Sager and his writing. It was such a ride! I am very impressed with the way that this book was written and the topic, its something that isn’t something that many writers tackle. What do you do when you’re the only person that survives a massacre? What happens after you survive something that terrible? Well that is what we are going to find out in this fantastic book! We get a look into the life of Quinn, a young woman who survived all of her friends being killed. Years later she is named a Final Girl along with two other young women who were left as survivors of different crimes. We see them dealing with life after they are left alive or escape. Then one of these girls commits suicide and everything changes. Could Quinn have done something? Could Quinn have been there and supported Lisa so that there would be a different outcome? Now Sam comes into the picture, yet another final girl but things don’t feel right. Quinn likes to say that shes ok but how could you ever be ok after surviving the horrors that she did? “Because here’s the thing about details—they can also be a distraction. Add too many and it obscures the brutal truth about a situation. They become the gaudy necklace that hides the tracheotomy scar.” Quinn was hiding her scars. She didn’t want to remember the details or admit that there was truly something still wrong with her. She’s going to need the support of everyone she loves to be able to move past this and face her demons but what happens when you don’t know where your demons are coming from?
I loved that this book explores the psychological aspect of what a person who survives an incident. For us, the situation is over once the person is saved and someone is charged. For the person that lived through it though the nightmare doesn’t end there. They live with it for the rest of their lives and this book explored that aspect.
If you’re a horror fan you know what the phrase “final girl” means. A woman who survives the murders of all her friends at a camp, sorority house, a cabin in the woods and of course an abandoned insane asylum. This author asks the question: What would happen if there really were final girls? Women who survived horror-movie like violence? And what happens when they start to disappear?
Sooooo good!
Very unpredictable. I liked it!
Captivating and compelling, with a refreshingly brilliant premise, Riley Sager is one to watch.