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.

Book Type:

Adult psychological thriller

Review: Final Girls

With a fresh, unsettling perspective, Riley Sager evokes slasher flicks and our macabre fascination with the last girl standing—the final girl who makes it out alive.

In this story, we meet Quincy Carpenter, who ten years ago as a college student ran from the place where her friends had all been killed. As the sole survivor of the Pine Cottage massacre, she became a real-life Final Girl, along with Lisa and Samantha, who had each survived their own nightmares.

Thankfully, Quincy doesn’t remember anything from that night, and she refuses to be defined by that term—Final Girl. She has a successful boyfriend, a great apartment and a popular baking blog, even if her days are punctuated by diurnal cocktails of Xanax and grape soda. And if ever the pressure should mount, she’s got Coop—the cop who saved her ten years ago and who’s still a steadfast presence in her life.

But when one of the three Final Girls is found dead and the other shows up at her apartment, her sanity begins to fracture. The past won’t leave her alone, and before too long, she’s caught up in a deadly web of lies. By the book’s end, she’ll have to relive the nightmare all over again and hope she can survive a second time around.

While the story primarily unravels from Quincy’s limited perspective, Sager cleverly interjects the narrative with scenes from that dreadful night at Pine Cottage. Evocative of slasher film style, these scenes come across as quick-moving flashbacks that keep our attention rapt. We can’t seem to look away from the frightening sounds and viscerally felt images as we anticipate how it all will end.

Themes of redemption and catharsis cleave this tautly written story which will rattle you along the way and shock you with its final, blood-spattered twist.