Title: Final Girls

Author: Riley Sager

Series: none

Publisher: Dutton

Publication Date: July 11th, 2017

Genres: Thriller, Adult

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-fiancé, 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 is really seeking 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.

This book paid homage to a plethora of slasher tropes, and I enjoyed uncovering the references sprinkled throughout the novel. It helped to build and maintain a spooky ambiance, which is one of the primary reasons that I keep returning to the thriller and horror genres. The premise was interesting, the characters well-fleshed out, and the suspense dramatically built up within the first several chapters…and then dissipated with the glacial pace of the plot. The book opened with a bang, and then dragged on for hundreds of pages with little to grab my interest and keep me invested. I often found my mind wandering, and while the book opened with a bang, Sager couldn’t continue this momentum for the remainder of the book. My disinterest converted into eventual apathy toward the characters, and I found that I no longer cared about who remained standing by the conclusion. Fast forward to the final chapters, and the pace exploded, giving me an unpleasant case of whiplash at the rapidly changing tempo. There was far too much information revealed in the concluding pages of the book, and many of these details could have been revealed far earlier in the plot without spoiling the ending.

To compound matters, the twists scattered throughout the book ranged from incredibly obvious and predictable to completely outlandish and incongruent with the rest of the storyline and character building. This took much of the fun out of trying to guess where the book was headed. I either foresaw the plot twists from a mile away, or was completely blindsided by the twists and unable to piece together how they were even feasible after they had been revealed. None of the twists were satisfying, and they instead felt cheap, rushed, and poorly executed. Too much time was spent laying out the setup for the twists, drawing attention to this setup, and then reminding you for the tenth time about this setup. When you inevitably guessed the twist correctly, there was no payoff. The concluding twist was equally disappointing, and I was able to think of several alternatives that would have been far more satisfying and sensical given the buildup throughout the book.

One of the redeeming qualities of the book was the characters, which were lifelike and three dimensional. They were quirky and original, and I enjoyed getting glimpses into their day-to-day lives during the excessive amount of down-time throughout the book. While this eventually grew monotonous, I enjoyed the information that this added to the characterization and would not have wanted this excluded altogether. With that being said, characters began deviating considerably from their previously described personalities and traits as the book drew to a close, drawing me out of the tale and serving as a source of considerable frustration.

Overall, I loved the setup, premise, and nods to well-known slashers. I’ve always found Sager to do an excellent job at character-building, although the execution of some of the characters went a bit awry at the end of the book. Furthermore, the twists didn’t do it for me. The ending felt poorly paced, ineffective, and dissatisfying, leading to a bit of a letdown.