Final Girls

I came across the term "final girl" and its significance while reading Stephen Graham Jones, and now I find it intriguing every time I come across it. Riley Sager's "Final Girls" has been on my to-be-read list for a while now, and I finally decided that this was the month to dive in.

The audiobook features two incredible narrators who brought the characters to life so vividly that I was disappointed every time I had to press pause.

Quincy, one of the final girls in the story, is a master at compartmentalizing her life. Despite appearing to have it all together with her successful boyfriend, luxurious apartment, and popular baking blog, she's secretly struggling with the horrors of her past, relying on Xanax to cope. The suspense reaches show more new heights when Sam, another final girl, enters the scene. She's a mysterious character, and I found myself constantly trying to unravel her intentions. Sager's skillful use of red herrings kept me guessing until the very end. I can't recommend this book enough!

#TheFinalGirls #RileySager #Audiobook #Spooktober show less

Riley Sager is one hell of a writer. This book had so many twists and turns - I couldn't put it down or stop thinking about it after I finished it. Quincy was dubbed a "final girl" by the press - it's not flattering, but it is true. She was the only one to survive a massacre that took 5 of her friends. She's blocked out that part of her life and can't even remember that fatal night - only the guilt at being the only survivor. She's not alone though - there are two other final girls who have survived similar nightmarish slaughters against the odds. When the woman who survived a sorority massacre in Muncie, Indiana commits suicide - Quincy feels betrayal. How could you kill yourself after surviving such an ordeal?! Quincy and Lisa weren't show more close but they had talked before - the Final Girl bond is hard to break. The third Final Girl has pretty much hid out for years - never talking to the media and constantly moving around. After Lisa's suicide she suddenly shows up at Quincy's New York apartment. What does she want after all this time and why is she being so weird? Soo deliciously good! show less

Quincy is a final girl. The sole survivor of a real life horror movie style massacre. All of her friends died in a lonely cabin in the woods, but Quincy made it out. And she’s managed to put together a pretty good life-- until she finds out one of her fellow final girls is dead and the other one shows up on her doorstep.

This is a slow burn of a horror story. You get to know Quincy, get exposed to the other final girls Lisa and Sam, get a feel for Coop, the cop that saved Quincy’s life, spend time with Jeff, Quincy’s fiance. Chapters about present day Quincy are interspersed with flashbacks from the night of the massacre, so you read along with Quincy as her present starts to unravel and as that horrible night starts to unfold.

But show more once things get going, man does shit get intense. Thrills and chills galore. I was compelled to read, almost addicted to the book. At one point, seeing that I only had a few chapters to go, I forced myself to put the book down. I wanted to savor it. The end comes barreling down on you, blood and gore flying, and you can only sit back and watch as it all comes apart. Sure, there is a bit of monologue-ing from the villain near the end, but at that point I was 100% committed. show less

Joining this club has never been so traumatizing...

Quincy survived a massacre ten years ago and is now lumped together with two other women who endured similar tragedies, coined "The Final Girls" by the press. She's worked hard to overcome what happened to her, content with her boyfriend and working on her baking website. Her hero, Coop, the cop that rescued her, even stands by her side all these years, answering her call anytime she needs him. But when one of the Final Girls ends up murdered and the other Final Girl shows up at her doorstep, she's forced to take another hard look in the mirror.

What I didn't see coming was the end, like all good thrillers. Little twists and turns were carefully planted along the way and I found myself show more needing to know all the answers to the questions this book poses. Then, like being slapped sideways, the end of the book arrives and spills all the juicy details and leaves your brain struggling to understand what just happened.

The narrator, Erin Bennett, is one of my favorites. Her voice is beautiful to listen to - tone, phrasing.. Especially while reading a thriller, a good narrator is key. I enjoy listening to anything she narrates.

Definitely recommend to anyone who enjoys a good thriller! Riley Sager is definitely top notch! show less

(insert Quicksilver gif of "didn't see that coming)

Oh gosh oh my. OK folks let's start this wild ride I found myself on.

What drew me to this book originally was the title "Final Girls". One of my favorite tropes and one criminally unused and overused somehow. (for the record my favorite modern Final Girl is Emma Roberts in Scream 4, much like Neve Campbell in Scream, Emma is as much a deconstruction of the trope as she is an embodiment of it at times).

After reading the excerpt in the recent Buzz Books sampler I absolutely needed to read it. Once again ALA Midwinter provided me with this chance.

This as much a thriller as it is a psychological look at how time, memory and emotions can make a person blind. There is so much horror for show more Quincy to have endured it makes sense for her to push it out of memory. Not just of the killings, but of other factors - if she remembered she'd have to examine how certain other clues would mess her up even more.

I will say the ending is startling though after looking at things objectively not a surprise. Sager takes you on this wild rager of a ride and from page one the reader is so tied up in the feelings of Quincy that you too get blinded.

So so good. So recommended. show less

Quincy Carpenter survived a horrific attack right out of a slasher movie that left her the sole survivor. Her college friends were all brutally murderered. It’s no surprise that the media labeled her a final girl along with two other women who survived similar experiences. When One of the final girls Lisa is found dead and her apparent suicide labeled a murder upon closer scrutiny, Quincy is under a media microscope. Sam, the other final girl who isolated herself, comes out of hiding to connect with Quincy, creating a media frenzy, but Sam seems to half ulterior motives for being there.

Final Girls was one of my most anticipated books of the year and it proved to be a mixed bag of a book. I love the concept of the book. The author show more takes references and situation from slasher films and amalgamated them into the three final girl situations. Each woman deals with the aftermath of their trauma differently. Quincy tries to throw herself into normalcy, denying that her horrific experience had any effect on her at all. She’s about to marry a sweet man who works as a district attorney and works as a baking blogger who makes perfect cutesy treats. Underneath it all, she’s still rages, has blackouts, keeps people at arms’ length, suffers from depression and loneliness, and buries it all under her normalcy shield, Xanax, and wine. Sam crashes into her life and wants Quincy be to admit her anger. Sam is messy, abrasive, and most likely homeless, but she processes her past in a way Quincy refuses to. Lisa was my favorite final girl because she saw her situation as an opportunity to help other people through the darkest moment in their lives.

What follows in the book is frustrating from character actions to the way the twist is handled to the writing. Sam coaxes Quincy into playing vigilante in Central Park in the middle of the night. Not only is it incredibly stupid and dangerous, but it also takes up way too much of the book. I found it a waste of time in the book and it didn’t end up being very significant. It only served to give Sam power over Lisa. The twist at the end is unnecessarily spoon fed to the reader. The overall way of writing really bothered me because of the horrible characterizations of women and so much wrong information about them. Quincy wants everyone to read her mind and give her exactly what she wants without communicating. Of course she doesn't truly love her nice guy boyfriend because "women don't like nice guys." Sam ruins everything she touches. All are horrible female stereotypes. Small things bothered me as well like the author having absolutely no idea how bras work and claiming that true crime blogs are ran only by men because they have the time to waste??? The ID channel, Lifetime, the huge success of My Favorite Murder and podcasts like it, and all the female true crime enthusiasts would like a word with you.

Final Girls is probably the biggest let down of the year for me. I had heard such positive things, but it didn't live up to any of them. The protagonist made the most horrible decisions and the vigilante subplot just became the plot for most of the book. The obviously male author made so many generalizations about women and had no knowledge about things he should have looked up or asked about. Now I know not to read any books by Todd Ritter, the actual author of the book. show less

First and foremost, I want to extend a sincere thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a free ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. It means a lot and I greatly appreciate the generosity,

You all know my deep deep love for horror movies, and that I have a serious guilty-ish pleasure for the slasher film genre. There are so many things about it that are kind of grotesque and trite, but I really do enjoy a slash ’em up kind of flick like “Halloween”, “Friday the 13th”, or “Scream”. I think that my love for that subgenre stems from my time as an awkward teenager who was a bit more cautious and shy than some of her lady friends. Because of this, I really related to the “Final Girl” trope that those movies show more almost always trot out: the virginal good girl who triumphs over evil and is the only one who can vanquish the bloodthirsty villain. The movie “Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon” did a great job of deconstructing the concept of the Final Girl, as did the movie “Final Girls”, and I’ve been aching to read a book about it as well. When Lauren Beukes “Survivors’ Club” didn’t quite get there, my only hope left was “Final Girls” by Riley Sager, and BOY am I THRILLED to say that this book nailed it and gave me everything I needed.

The very scenarios given in this book as the mass killings that the Final Girls endured are so textbook 80s slasher film that I was living a Dayglow glittered fever dream. You have the college kids in a cabin in the woods, the sorority house massacre, and the isolated motel ambush with a killer who is wearing a sack on his head! PERFECTION. But even beyond setting up the perfect slasher scenarios, Sager also painted pictures of how an actual ‘Final Girl’ might endure after the trauma. As much as we love the idea of Nancy Thmpson or Laurie Strode going on to live happy lives, in the real world the consequences would be far more long lasting. Quincy is a complete mess whose outward appearance is a lie to the pain underneath. She has her baking blog and her true blue fiance, but she is addicted to Xanax and unable to let go of Coop, the cop who saved her all those years ago from a killer in the woods. She has distanced herself from other survivors of violent massacres, Lisa and Sam, because while the media loves to lump them together, she just wants to be herself and to live her life. I really loved Quincy for her full damaged self.

The thing that surprised me the most about this book was that it wasn’t the meta and self referential homage that I was expecting it to be, even though it’s set up was one hundred percent spot on for such a novel. Instead there was a serious mystery here, specifically involving Sam. After Lisa, the original and perhaps most ‘with it’ Final Girl is found dead of an apparent suicide, Quincy is approached by the second, Sam, who had been off the grid for years. The mystery at the heart of this book is about Sam’s experiences, as well as Quincy’s. Though I went in thinking that it would be about the two of them teaming up to find a killer, it turned out to be something much different. And then it superseded my expectations AGAIN when it also became a question about Quincy and her experience at a cabin in the woods. The movies like to portray these Final Girl types as innocents caught up in a whirlwind of circumstance, the ultimate Madonnas who are better than the Whores that surround them and therefore they get to live. But Sager poses that perhaps it’s more interesting if they are just complex, well rounded people instead of just a trope, and questions whether being innocent is the absolute only thing you can be to deserve to survive something as brutal as a slasher killer.

I truly enjoyed this book as a fan of the slasher genre, even if it wasn’t the self satisfied wink fest I thought it was going to be. Fans of this genre really need to go out and get their hands on “Final Girls”. Quincy has every right to stand with Laurie Strode, Nancy Thompson, and all those other badass women who take out those who wish them ill, and she can do it while still being damaged. show less