The reviews on this one were so mixed, honestly I get it, I can admit my rating was partially influenced by the Riley Sager high I was riding at the time of reading having just read The Only One Left & The House Across The Lake in quick succession. I’m not saying it was a bad read, I liked the book, let’s review.
Final Girls by Riley Sager
- Category – Horror Mystery Thriller
- Length – 352 Pages
- Read Time – 3.5 Days
- GR Rating – 4 Stars
Final Girls is as the title suggests a story about the lone girl left standing at the end of a murderers spree. Quincy Carpenter survived a birthday getaway with friends that ended in unspeakable violence. Witnessing & surviving the massacre that took the lives of five of her friends, Quincy is of course traumatized & deeply changed. We start the story off years after the night of the Pine Cottage massacre & get the story recapped as Quincy revisits her few memories of that night & remembers things she’d blocked from her memory since. Despite the medias attempts throughout the years to get Quincy’s side of the story she has refused, believing that to move on she must let go & leave behind, never to be mentioned or thought of again. An idea that her boyfriend, Jeff, supports (no doubt because it makes living in proximity to her easier, he gets to have a happy “normal” girlfriend & doesn’t have to deal with her trauma if she’s not “defined by that night”) & so she lives a comfortable life in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, baking & blogging her pastry masterpieces.
In the midst of the story we’re introduced, by name & tragedy only, to 2 other “final girls”, women that Quincy never actually met but shared this tragic kinship with. Lisa, the OG final girl & self-proclaimed mentor of the final girls & Sam, the one who disappeared. Lisa was open to sharing her story with the world & open to being in the limelight because of it, choosing to face the cameras, both literally & figuratively. She was a public advocate & cautionary tale for young women, most of all other final girls, Lisa reached out to Quincy after her tragedy, expressing her concern & unwavering support should she want it. Sam on the other hand chose a life of privacy, choosing to separate herself from the publicity of her tragedy & disappear from the spotlight to live in anonymity, that is until she shows up on Quincy’s doorstep.
Sams’ arrival seems innocent enough at first, especially as she shows up on the heels of some upsetting news, but things quickly start to get tense. Her presence in Quincys home turning ominous fairly quickly. Why has Sam shown up so suddenly & publicly, after all the years in hiding? What does she know about Lisa & what happened to her? Is she even who she says she is?
Jeff is hesitant in trusting Sam, suspicious of her intentions, a suspicion that he voices to Quincy. However, disarmed by the suddenness of Sams’ arrival Quincy ignores the first few red flags, giving Sam the benefit of the doubt, ultimately ending up in a dangerous & compromising position because of it. In the end Quincy proves herself to be exactly what she’s been trying to separate herself from, a final girl.
My final rating on this book was 4 stars because although I rolled my eyes a few times here & there, I couldn’t help it my eyes roll at clichés of their own volition, the final twist in the end was worthy of at least 2/3’s of a star on its own.
Happy reading & as always thank you for joining me for another review.
- Have you read this book?
- What was your favorite part? (The multi-twist plot)
- What was your least favorite part? (Quincy trusting a stranger! Stranger danger girl stranger danger!)
- How many stars do you rate this book?
Hasta la próxima – V
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