Brief synopsis: Quincy is a final girl - like in a horror movie when everyone is murdered, except the one final girl that remains.Two other final girls precede her - Lisa and Samantha. It's been 10 years since Quinn's tragic night at Pine Cottage, and she still has a black hole where her memories should be. But when Lisa's found dead, Samantha shows up on Quinn's doorstep. But something's weird about Sam. She brings out the worst in Quinn, and just maybe, she'll bring out the memories.


I chose Final Girls as a Book of the Month pick last summer, and like so many of my other BOTM picks, it got set to the side and I'm just getting around to reading a whole bunch of them. As I started reading Final Girls, I was definitely getting some Scream-vibes, and let me tell you - Scream is hands-down one of my favorite slasher films of all time. Then I made the mistake of looking more into Riley Sager, which is a pen name. And I came to find out that Sager is actually male author Todd Ritter, and my perception changed a bit as I was reading through the book. I think in many cases, male authors have to be careful when portraying female characters. Female authors using male pen names were almost forced to do so because of sexism and the chance that people would not purchase the books if they knew it was written by a woman. Now, a lot of male authors are using female pen names; perhaps to increase sales? Whatever, that's fine. My issue was some of the things Quinn did and her reasoning behind it felt wrong coming from a male. Maybe it's just me, but did anyone else feel this way reading the book?


Now that I've gotten that off my chest.


I really enjoyed the book. It was the perfect combination of slasher film, unreliable narrator, and suspense. It was seriously so twisty, I had no idea who was a "bad guy." I knew this story wasn't going to be as straight-forward as originally led to believe. The perp crossed my mind maybe once during reading, but I threw it to the side, so finding out who it really was had. me. shook! I also liked the obvious parallels between current-day and the time revolving around the Pine Cottage incident. The way those chapters were lined up were really impressive and intriguing.

I read through this novel in a day because I seriously could not put it down. The characters were just the right amount of frustrating, but I wish I could have received more background information for Jonah (journalist following the final girls story), for Coop (Quinn's rescuer and confidante), and for Jeff (Quinn's boyfriend). Not that it was necessary to benefit the story, but would have just been good fun to have had. I also felt there was some relevance to Jeff's case - he is a public defender. I would have really liked to hear the outcome of the case and witnessed some parallel to the story. I also felt there could have been more happen between Jonah and Quinn because of their history, and I did feel that particular story could have been developed or pursued a bit further.

Overall, I thought the book was really well-written and all kinds of twisty. Final Girls had me simultaneously up at night to read it and up at night afraid to read it. I would definitely recommend this novel to anyone looking for equal parts slasher, thriller, and suspense.