Review: Final Girls by Riley Sager

Final Girls
by Riley Sager

Copyright: 2017

Pages: 339

Read: Jan. 4-8, 2018

Rating: 5/5

Source: Book of the Month

 

 

Blurb: Ten years ago, college student Quincy Carpenter went on vacation with five friends and came back alone, the only survivor of a horror movie-scale massacre. In an instant, she became a member of a club no one wants to belong to – a group of similar survivors known in the press as the Final Girls: Lisa, who lost nine sorority sisters to a college dropout’s knife; Sam, who went up against the Sack Man during her shift at the Nightlight Inn; and now Quincy, who ran bleeding through the woods to escape Pine Cottage and the man she refers to only as Him. The three girls are all attempting to put their nightmares behind them and, with that, one another. Despite the media’s attempts, they never meet.

Now Quincy is doing well – maybe even great, thanks to her Xanax prescription. She has a caring almost-finance, Jeff; a popular baking blog; a beautiful apartment; and a therapeutic presence in Coop, the police officer who saved her life all those years ago. Her memory won’t even allow her to recall the events of that night; the past is in the past.

That is, until Lisa, the first Final Girl, is found dead in her bathtub, wrists slit, and Sam, the second, appears on Quincy’s doorstep. Blowing through Quincy’s life like a whirlwind, Sam seems intent on making Quincy relive the past, with increasingly dire consequences, all of which makes Quincy question why Sam has sought her out. And when new details about Lisa’s death come to light, Quincy’s life becomes a race against time as she tries to unravel Sam’s truths from her lies, evade the police and hungry reporters, and, most crucially, remember what really happened at Pine Cottage, before what was started ten years ago is finished.

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Review: This was my second read of 2018 and my first 5 star rating! I mean I could gush on and on about this book! It was THAT good!

So basically you’ve got Quincy who acts like she has her act together after surviving a terrible incident which saw her best friends murdered before her eyes. She’s labeled a “Final Girl”. She’s effectively blocked it completely out of her mind and “thinks” she’s moved past it. But can one really move past something like that?! When Sam, another “Final Girl” randomly shows up on her doorstep, things start to spiral for Quincy. She’s not nearly as perfect as she wants everyone to believe. And then she begins remembering what happened that night many years ago …. Maybe some things are better left unremembered ….

I don’t want to give any more plot details about it without getting into spoilers. But really, this book caught me from the very first page and I was absolutely hooked until I finished it. And that ending …. well! It’s a crazy ending that I was not prepared for! I’m so glad that I picked this one up. It had been on my shelf since July when it was my BOTM pick. And when I saw that Samantha had really enjoyed it, I knew I had to pick it up sooner rather than later. I haven’t been caught up in a book like I was with this one in a very long time, so I really enjoyed my time with it.

I know this one has been marketed as a horror novel. I’m not sure I’m entirely on board with that classification. It definitely has a horror movie feel. But I personally think it’s more in the psychological thriller genre than horror. Maybe that’s just because I tend to correlate horror novels with scary books and this was more intense suspense than scary.

And can I just say that I really hope this book is made into a movie ASAP! I know I read online that the rights have been purchased, but I haven’t seen any more information than that. But I know this one will make an awesome movie! And I don’t usually feel that way about book to movie adaptations.

Anyway … I can only give you one solid piece of advice ….. read this book!!