A great premise, suspense that keeps ratcheting up, and one hell of a twist.  I like that there is a female protagonist who isn't unlikable and might have a brain.  More please!

Riley Sager never disappoints. I always feel such an affinity with they main characters and enjoy unraveling whatever mystery is cooked up. It’s always a good day when there’s a new Sager book.

The final girls, those who lived through hell and survived one way or another.  I was expecting to be at the edge of my seat, biting my nails, but alas it didn't happen.

The story was slow and not in the building tension slow kind of way, I didn't like the main character and the plot twist wasn't that shocking.  I gave it 3 stars because it picked the pace in the last pages.

I am tiring of the victimized woman trope so popular in mystery fiction. I felt the twist ending was unearned. Thumbs down.

They call them Final Girls.  There's Lisa, the only survivor of ten sorority girls who died when a man broke into the house.  Samantha who survived a horrific attack at a hotel where she was on her first shift as a maid.  Quincy Carpenter who went with her friends on a weekend getaway to a cabin in the woods only to have it become a slaughter house when a man broke out of a nearby mental hospital.  The world and media was fascinated with their stories and wanted to know why, why, why were they the only ones to survive?

Years later, there are still consequences to surviving such horror.  Lisa, who is the oldest, finished her education and became a psychologist helping others.  Samantha went off the grid and no one has heard from her in years.  Quincy seems to be doing the best.  She has a lovely apartment in New York, a fiance who is supportive and loving and a baking blog which allows her to turn her therapeutic baking into a career. 

Then it happens.  Quincy gets a call from the policeman who saved her all those years ago and who has remained a constant force in her life.  Coop is the man who has always been there for her, always available by phone or text and coming for visits to make sure Quincy is okay.  He calls to give her the news.  Lisa is dead, a suicide.  As Quincy is struggling to deal with the news, she gets an even bigger shock.  Someone stops her outside her apartment and it is Samantha or Sam as she likes to be called.

Quincy invites her in.  Sam as she likes to be called, is rough around the edges.  She dresses to shock and it's clear she has been living off the radar.  She has heard the news and as the only person alive who really understands what Quincy's life is, she has come to join forces.  Quincy's fiance is skeptical and dismayed, sure Sam is there to try to get money from them or some other sketchy plan.  But when Quincy and Sam find out that Lisa's suicide is instead murder, nothing can make them separate.

As the days go by, Quincy finds that the roughness she sees in Sam is deeply ingrained.  Sam is defiant and reckless, tempting men to see her as a victim so that she can turn around and work out her anger on them.  Quincy is appalled and intrigued in equal measure.  But none of Sam's stories seem to check out and soon Quincy is scared of her and not sure how to disentangle herself or what Sam might do next.  Has she traded one nightmare for another?

This was a debut novel for Riley Sager, a former journalist and editor.  It burst onto the scene in 2017 and in 2018 was the winner of the International Thriller Award for Best Novel.  The story is written at a pace that moves the reader along with it, never quite sure what the next page will bring.  The truth is slowly revealed as the reader discovers it along with Quincy.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.

Rating: 3.5/5 stars
CWs: drug abuse, alcohol abuse, gaslighting, ableist themes

I don't think there was a single character in "Final Girls" that I felt inclined to root for. Except Lisa. And the reporter, whose name I think was Jonah? I don't know, whatever, but there was no character I loathed more than Jeff. The gaslighting, the narcissism, the "you're not a victim, you've moved past it", like surviving a massacre was supposed to be a blip on Quincy's radar. I understand why Quincy put up with him for as long as she did, she had deep-rooted issues to tend to, but yikes. I was seriously rooting for the Pine Cottage killer to come back and kill Jeff.

Hating Jeff was fun because a lot of the other characters couldn't stand him either. Glad we were all on the same page.

"Final Girls" surprised me. I mean, it was cliché in the ways that slasher films tend to be: psych ward escapees, cabin in the woods, college kids partying, mystery killer(s), sex on an ancient burial ground... The usual problematic storylines. But it still managed to surprise me. It was raw, showing the "after" that nobody really thinks about beyond crime scene tape and paramedics. It wasn't a happy story about finding inner peace and moving on with all of your faculties in tact, it was about suppressing the horrific memories and dealing with survivor's guilt and trying to survive the day without beating a random stranger into a coma one sleepless night in Central Park. It's about finding a way to live, not just survive. It's about owning your shit, not escaping it with one addiction or another.

What surprised me was Quincy.

I had gone into this book wanting to read a story about a badass young girl trying to live her life the best she can, post-massacre. In a way, that's exactly what I got. It just took longer for her to get there.

Quincy wasn't a likable character, most of the time; I don't think she was supposed to be. I did appreciate how Sam called her out on her crap and woke her up a bit. Honestly, the thing getting me through the book was wanting to find out what happened at Pine Cottage. Does that make me any better than those "final girl" fanatics Quincy loathed so much? Probably not. Somewhere along the way, I grew to care about her. Granted, it was pretty far along the road, but hey.

Clearly, I have a lot of feelings about "Final Girls". Are they all negative? No. I think this book was structured well. The story was what it needed to be. The killer's storyline was a little weird, but, again, slasher films. *shrug* All in all, I don't believe I regret the experience. There was mystery, there was blood, there was Quincy's growing resentment for Jeff...

Do I recommend this book? Crap, I don't know. If you like the slasher genre, go for it.

Disclaimer: I was given an ARC of "Final Girls" through NetGalley in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. I didn't get around to reading the book back in 2017, but I did recently borrow a copy from my local library!

I’ve given it 1 star, because It won’t let me continue unless I rate the book, although I haven’t read it. The format that we are given to download had font that was so tiny, I couldn’t read it. There was no way to adjust the size of the font on a Nook, on the version we are given.

OMG 😱 

YA’LL THIS WAS A LONG, WILD RIDE 

This. Book. Left. Me. Speechless 😶 
Though there were some parts that dragged a bit, the TWISTS and TURNS came so unexpectedly and there were a lot of red herrings that I thought was said person, but wasn't and that was the best part-being able to turn my views completely around.

Can you trust just anyone?  This was a great thriller and I love how mysterious it was!  Great twists throughout the book!!

I enjoyed the story.  The parts that jumped back to the past were entertaining.  The only part I was disappointed with was the ending.  I felt like it was a bit of a letdown.  I think I might have come to this book with high expectations.  I had been reading a lot of thrillers and was hoping for just as much excitement.  If you haven't read many thrillers, this one might be more exciting.

Thank you Netgalley and Publisher for this early copy!

It took me way too long to finally read this thriller. I've been wanting to read a book by Sager for ages and finally dove into this one. It was a solid 4 star read for me. Parts of the novel dragged but the twists and mystery was great. I recommend checking it out!

Quincy is the lone survivor after a brutal attack and is trying to live a normal life. Everything is going well until another “final girl” Lisa is found dead. After hearing about Lisa death things slowly start to spiral out of control for Quincy. 

I really liked Quincy but I felt like she needed intense help with dealing with the aftermath of the attacks. She really didn’t have a solid support system. Quincy in my opinion has been living in a constant state of denial and it was no surprise she started to unravel/break after Lisa’s death.

I do have to say I was on the fence with Sam showed up. After all of these years? I didn’t trust her motives at all and I honestly felt she didn’t mean well when it came to Quincy.

This was my first time reading anything by this author and it was a good read. This story held my interest and I loved the way the author made you question everybody as a suspect. I had two theories about the real killer and what Quincy was not remembering and I was hundred percent wrong with both. I loved the way the ending unfolded and I didn’t see that coming! Way to keep me on my toes until the very end! I’ve placed “The Last Time I Lied” on my tbr pile and I can’t wait to see what this book brings me!

Yes, I'm giving a book I DNF'd four stars. Don't @ me. 

I really, really was enjoying this book - until the nightmare. My empath brain just could not handle this book, so I had to take a step back. But OH MY GOSH IT'S SO GOOD AND MY HEART HURTS DOING THIS.

After the horrifying events at Pine Cottage 10 years ago, Quincy has finally built a “normal” life. She is a successful blogger, has a nice apartment and thinks she’ll soon be tying the knot with her boyfriend. So what if she still has to rely on Xanax at times to get her through the day? Lucky for her she can still also rely on her friendship with Coop, or Officer Cooper who rescued her.

Quincy joined the ranks of the “final girls” after surviving the massacre at Pine Cottage. Lisa and Sam are two other final girls, dubbed so by the media, because they were the sole survivors of similar situations. They each have found a way to cope with their pasts but Quincy has tried to distance herself and not think of herself as a final girl. She wants to move on but her life is going to be upended by Sam who finds Quincy and wants to talk about her past.

Sam is quite the opposite from Quincy. She lives a life with no rules and thinks that Quincy is not quite telling the truth about not recalling the events of the past. She challenges Quincy and while at first Quincy doesn’t want to engage in the risky behaviors Sam partakes in, at the same time she hasn’t been truthful about everything. She is slowly won over by Sam’s insistence and Quincy is discovering another side of herself.

The novel moves back and forth in time, slowly revealing what Quincy was like before the massacre at Pine Cottage as well as revealing the backgrounds of the other final girls. I liked the build up to the big reveal and thought that was really well done and kept the suspense high. My disappoint in this book came mainly in that it went in a direction I wasn’t expecting. In my mind, I had resolved it all in a great way and it didn’t pan out. So not really the story’s fault but it was me trying to get ahead of the story. Would I read another thriller by this author? Yes, absolutely.

I read a ton of literary fiction but I also love a good thriller. Riley Sager's Final Girls was a great one to read in 2018. It put me back in the mood to read and kept me engaged from page one. 
Quincy belongs to The Final Girls, a group of 3 women who were the sole survivors of massacres. Ten years later she doesn't remember key details of the crime, but has moved forward the best she can. She has a cooking blog, a fiance and has remained friends with the cop who saved her life. When one of the other Final Girls Lisa commits suicide and the third Sam shows up on her doorstep her life becomes disheveled. Sam wants Quincy to confront her anger and fear and remember what happened and Quincy is thrown back into memories of her past.  As the novel progresses Quincy begins to wonder if she can trust Sam and her motives.
The novel provides flashbacks of Quincy's friends' massacre and gradually reveals what happened while also staying fast paced in the current day. I had a hunch about the ending but still enjoyed every curve thrown in to get me there. I highly recommend Final Girls and am excited to read more from this author.

Really loved this book it was a great read that I ordered for our library. It had a lot of mystery and I have been really been into psychological crime thrillers. Quincy Carpenter is the sole survivor of an incident at a remote cabin in which all of her friends were brutally murdered by a maniac 10years ago. 2 other women exist in the United States who have similar stories, nicknamed the "Final Girls" by the media after a horror film. When one of them winds up unexpectedly dead, the third girl named Sam heads out  to New York to find Quincy, so they can comfort each other over their shared experiences and loss. But are her motives really so innocent? What does she really want from Quincy? Is there someone out there who wants to see all the "Final Girls" dead? And if so, who? And what is she forgetting from the night of the murders? Lots of mystery which is what I like and really well written loved this book and would definitely recommend.

More like a solid 3.5 (mostly because Quincy was annoying the shit out of me 99.9% of the time) stars, but I rounded up to 4 because the conclusion managed to surprise me! One of the twists I saw coming, that Tina was not really Samantha, and was originally from the mental asylum near Pine Cottage, but the other one totally threw me for a loop!  Quincy was a little too much of a self-denying trainwreck in the beginning for me to really care too much about her. By the end I was a bit more invested in what happened to her, especially when she began remembering the original attack and what really happened. I liked the full circle of the ending. Overall a pretty good read, like reading a slasher flick instead of watching it. It was nice to see Quincy become a bit more of a badass, wish she'd taken charge of her situation sooner though.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, all opinions are my own.  Thanks NetGalley!

Quincy Carpenter was a college student a decade ago, when she went on vacation with five of her friends, but only she survived the massacre that took the other's lives on the trip. Quincy and several other survivors of murderous attacks are dubbed, The Final Girls by the media. 
Now, years later Quincy, with the help of medication has moved on with her life. She has a boyfriend, authors a blog, and lives in a comfy apartment. Everything seems as it should be until one of the Final Girls is found dead in her bathtub. That's when Sam, another girl in the club no one wants to be a part of, shows up at Carpenter's home and drags her into a past she would rather not remember.

This is a great psychological thriller that keeps you guessing as you read. You begin thinking you know whodunit, but after so many twists and turns, you realize you had no idea. Quincy is a Final Girl, a young woman who survived an attack where all her friends were slaughtered. She is one of three, Sam, who have suffered the same fate. When one of the other young women comes to her home saying that they need to talk, she takes her in, even if reluctantly. When she gets an email from one of the other survivors before she is killed, Quincy begins to question Sam and her intentions. Suddenly, everything she had once believed begins to be turned on its head. 

I loved this book and have recommended it to everyone on my blog, Goodreads, and library. This is a must read. I am reading it again on audible, and cannot wait to write a glowing review there as well. 

Thank you to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for the ARC.

It took me a long time to begin this one because I have to be in a certain mood to read thrillers or horror-they are not my favorite genre but I do enjoy a good book of any type. This was a good one. It certainly loved up to its hype and it was a pretty riveting psychological thriller. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys this genre.