This was a novel that demands attention from the very first page and it constantly kept me guessing. It is hard giving a full review without revealing too much of the plot, BUT I can tell you that when you think its gonna zig it is definitely going to zag.

If you like the standard slasher flick, this Sager novel is for you. At times, it became a cliche, but still had a certain quirk that would make me forget the easily predictable moments and kept me fully engaged. Even when you think you have every detail figured out (I shamefully thought I had EVERYTHING figured out), Sager magically proves you wrong…every…single…time. You got me, Sager. You got me.

One aspect that I completely appreciated and made it harder and harder for me to put the book down at midnight was Sager’s use of flashbacks. Getting a peek at the main character’s life leading up to that dreadful massacre only added to the intensity and the need to keep reading.

This review was published on my site on Novermber 20th.

Stayed up way past my bed time to finish this. I'm torn between a 4 and 4.5 as my rating. Even though I read this book so much faster than I normally read, I found the suspense to build slowly. However, the end of each chapter had me wanting to read more... and so I did! As for the ending, it shocked me and I didn't see it coming. This was the best part of the book, about the last 80 pages or so. This book is like nothing I've read before and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

I've seen mixed reviews about this book, but I really loved it. I liked that the timeline alternated between current events and then the moments leading up to Quincy's attack at Pine Cottage. When I saw that this was a "horror" book I did expect it to be a little bit more gory, but I felt like this fell more into the suspense or thriller genre. I guess when I think of horror, I think of the Saw movies and while there are some descriptive scenes of the attacks that made me cringe, it wasn't cover my eyes gore like the Saw movies (thank god!)

The author did a fantastic job of keeping me on the edge of my seat and I kept see-sawing between what I thought was going to happen and which characters I was supposed to dislike and love.

I really enjoyed Quincy, she's not your typical book "heroine" that's perfect all the time. She has her broken edges and is trying her best to hold everything together which makes her so much more relatable, until the author throws you through the spin cycle again and then you're like "Oh God, is Sam the heroine? I don't even really like her, do I? Maybe I do... WTF is going on!"

If you're a fan of WTF plots like Gone Girl, then you will enjoy this book. With all the different timelines going on and the multiple mysteries you are trying to solve, I guarantee you will be up all hours trying to finish this one!

The easiness of being able to read this book was very pleasant. It was like I was surfing through the pages, reading chapter after chapter. The way we slowly got to know more about Pine Cottage was integrated very well in the story. Revealing a little bit every time. It was a terrifying story, and Quincy (and her friends) must have been gone through hell when they were there. Besides Quincy, the other final girls, Sam and Lisa must have had terrible experiences as well.

The cases of the final girls were very interesting. I felt a vibe of Criminal Minds and CSI when I read about the murderers, and I happen to love those kind of crime cases.

I absolutely enjoyed the characters. I loved Quincy's baking obsession and the blog she has. It felt so Martha Stewart to me. The complete opposite character of Sam was a good counterpart to Quincy. The complete opposite, but still so alike in a way. Until you figure out what is going on in the books. I felt from the beginning that something was off about Sam, but when all the truth came out in the end I was actually surprised it went a whole different way. I have to say that I didn't expect the turn in the story.

The plot was good. The story didn't get stuck, there being a twist every while to keep me interesting in the book. The pace was quick, which also made you fly through the book. In the middle part of the book I sometimes felt like I was ready for the finale, but we kept repeating the same scenes between Quincy and Sam. Like the baking, walks in the park, drinking together. It started to feel a little bit repetitive. Though overall I enjoyed it a lot!

At the beginning, it seemed to me that this is going to be just another one in a series of those plain and lukewarm kind of thrillers which have recently filled the shelves of so many booklovers. To begin with, it is enough to mention that the heroine of the novel, Quincy Carpenter, is another in a series of major thriller characters suffering from amnesia. The situation is even worse when the subject of heroine's suppressed memories is the most tragic event of her life, the birthday party of her best friend that turned into a terrible massacre.

For years after the tragedy, Quincy's memory is still suppressed, and she struggles to continue her normal life; she bakes, she writes her successful blog and enjoys a quiet life with her partner Jeff. In difficult moments she has her friend Coop by her side, the young police officer who found and rescued her in the night of the tragedy. Still, their quiet life is interrupted when the public becomes aware of the death of Lisa Milner, so Quincy once again becomes interesting to the media.

Lisa Milner, Samantha Boyd, and then Quincy Carpenter herself, became known in the American public as „Final Girls“, which is a popular name for the last surviving woman at the end of the horror movie. Though their stories were not related, Lisa, Samantha and Quincy indeed shared a truly unique experience - all three survived in horrific tragedies that had shocked the American media and the public. While Lisa survived a massacre in a sorority house in Indiana, Samantha survived a similar crime in the „Nightlight Inn“, a motel on the motorway near Tampa, and Quincy was the only survivor at „Pine Cottage“, a wood cottage rented by her friend Janelle's parents for her birthday.

Although the aforementioned three women never met, they occasionally contacted to share their experiences and the methods they used to cope with the burden of the tragedies they experienced in the past. For this reason, Quincy is not overly surprised when Samantha Boyd visits her after they found out about Lisa's death. However, this visit dramatically changes her life and slowly but surely opens the door to some painful memories from the Pine Cottage. With every new detail, it becomes clear that things are not what they seemed for years and that all this time Quincy's mind was hiding really amazing secrets.

And, that's all I can tell you, because I do not want to spoil the rest of the story with my comments. So, I'll left you with all those surprises prepared for you by the author hidden under the pseudonym Riley Sager. And there are so many surprises, believe me. That first, somewhat lousy impression of the book automatically changed in those moments when the plot was crowned with multiple turns that took the story to a completely new and unexpectedly interesting level. So this book became the queen of my Horror Week.

So, ignore the amnesia and give this book a chance! I believe you will not regret it. Also, the same thing was confirmed by the popular author Stephen King, who called the „Final Girls“ – „the first great thriller of 2017“. Enjoy your reading!

Sager brings a suspenseful glimpse into what life is like for the survivors of horrible crimes. When one girl is reported to have killed herself the other survivors or "final girl"s come together to understand the tragedy.

Quincy Carpenter has been dubbed by the press as a “Final Girl”. She’s the only survivor of a massacre that killed all of the friends she’d gone camping with. She can’t remember anything about that night after the group ate dinner, but the perpetrator of the massacre was conveniently shot dead by police on the scene, so at least she didn’t have to worry about him coming back for her.

The Final Girls are a small group, just three girls who have survived their respective massacres, and as the book opens, we find that they’ve been reduced by one. Lisa, the original Final Girl who survived a massacre at her sorority house, has been found dead, presumably by suicide. Even though Lisa and Quincy never met in person, the classification of Lisa’s death as suicide doesn’t sit right.

Just after Lisa’s suicide, the third Final Girl, Sam, shows up at Quincy’s condo to… well, that’s the question, isn’t it. She claims to be there because she wants to make sure Quincy is ok after Lisa’s suicide. Even though the girls never actually met, there’s still a strange, somewhat unwanted kinship between them that drove her out of hiding to Quincy’s front door.

But things with Sam aren’t exactly as they seem and it’s not long before Quincy is starting to suspect that she was right about Lisa’s death not being a suicide, and that Sam knows more than she’s telling.

The thing is… of course Sam knows more than she’s telling. Just by virtue of the fact that we’re reading this novel, that this novel exists, we know that there’s more to Sam than she’s letting on. If there wasn’t, there’d be no point to the book. Which is an inherent problem that mystery novels have. Specifically this type of mystery novel, where the point is to find out if the main character is right about a new person or situation in their lives. “I thought maybe Sam wasn’t exactly what she seemed, but I was wrong” isn’t a very exciting book.

And, unfortunately, neither was this one. It took way too long to get going. The beginning, almost the entire first half, was just Quincy baking and taking pictures for her baking blog, taking Xanax, and thinking in vague terms about something that had happened to her in the past without going into the details. This was interspersed with flashbacks to the weekend in the woods with her friends, but it started with all of them arriving at the cabin, and went into meticulous detail about the alcohol they drank, the pot they smoked, exactly what they made for dinner and who cooked it, and Quincy’s every thought and feeling about maybe, possibly, losing her virginity that weekend, or maybe not, and the flashbacks just dragged on and on until I was ready to scream.

The story picked up in the second half, but to be honest, at that point, I was already over it and wasn’t even really sure what the mystery was supposed to be here. Were we supposed to wonder if Sam had actually been the killer at the cabin? That would have made no sense. There wasn’t a mystery regarding the killer at the cabin, he’d been found at the scene and killed by the police. Were we supposed to think that he hadn’t been the actual killer? That didn’t make sense, either. Did Sam kill Lisa? Did anyone? Once it became clear what the mystery was and how we were supposed to figure it out, the book was two-thirds of the way done, and I wasn’t really interested anymore.

It was a quick read; I read it in one sitting. And I had high hopes for this one; it’s been getting so much great press. And I really love a good mystery, especially this time of year, when the days are still fairly warm, but the nights are getting chilly, and I’m curled up on my couch with a cozy blanket and a mug of tea or glass of wine. Unfortunately, this was a miss for me.

Thank you to Dutton Books for providing me with a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for review! All opinions are my own.

This was a book that had been one of my most anticipated of the year but for some reason, life kept getting in the way of me reading it. But finally, I was able to sit down and fly through this and oh my goodness was it a good one. If you're a fan of slasher horror movies, Final Girls is one you won't want to miss!

Plot:
Generally this is where I would sum up the story in my own little way but honestly, the synopsis up there does a...detailed enough job on its own. So don't just skim it if you want to know what this book is about- which you totally want to know.

As a fan of horror movies in general, this was a book I knew I was going to love just from the synopsis alone. And thankfully, I was not wrong! The story is so well written and really gives you that feeling you get when watching a slasher movie. It's not cheesy or silly (kind of like the Scream movie franchise, if you've seen that) but rather gives you this constant creepy vibe like something just isn't right. Reading Final Girls really felt like I was reading a horror movie script and I absolutely devoured it. It has an absolutely killer (haha, see what I did there?) opening and the momentum just keeps going from there. I loved how everything unfolded at what felt like the perfect pace where nothing was rushed through and nothing dragged on forever and got boring. It was such a suspenseful story that had me rapidly turning pages to find out what was going to happen next! My favorite part of this whole book was probably Quincy and how as you're following her story, you start to question quite literally everything about her and the things she does. You don't know who to trust and you're not even sure if Quincy is reliable and that was just such a fantastic aspect of the book that really elevated things to a new level. The blurb by Stephen King is a great way to describe this book: "The first great thriller of 2017 is here." Final Girls has just the right amount of horror, thrills, and suspense to keep you guessing until the very end and trust me, you won't see the ending coming at all.

Characters:
Everyone loves an unreliable narrator and Quincy is exactly that. You think she's got it all together and that she's at the very least managing to live a relatively normal life after Pine Cottage, but as the book progresses, you really see her start to unravel. She still can't remember everything that happened but something about Sam's presence causes Quincy to start remembering small details about that night. Is she telling the truth about what happened? Does she really not remember anything? As the reader, you just don't know and you're only able to go by what Quincy says. But as her life starts to fall apart after the arrival of the tornado that is Sam, you start to question Quincy and everything she says and does. I think I loved her character the best because of her unreliability and unpredictability. One minute she's baking and taking photos for her blog and the next she's beating a guy to a pulp. You never know what to expect, especially once she starts digging into Lisa's death more, and it's one great roller coaster ride with Quincy as the ride operator. Except this roller coaster has no safety bars and the conductor is a bit crazy.

I also really enjoyed all of the other characters in this book as well. Sam was, as I already described her, a tornado, and she was actually exciting (on the more suspenseful side) to follow because I never knew what she was going to do next. Coop was a strong, supportive character that Quincy was able to lean on when she needed him and I really enjoyed his presence throughout the book. Jeff was more of a side character, I personally felt, but he was also pretty supportive and helpful with Quincy although he definitely had his moments where he put his butt on his shoulders. But something that I liked was that Quincy and Jeff's relationship was more on the realistic side where instead of things being perfect throughout the whole book and them never fighting, they got into arguments and got upset at each other. It's just always nice to read a book with a relationship that I can actually believe because real relationships are not all kittens and rainbows, but rather hard work, fighting, disagreements, and even nights spent angry at each other. To have a horror book with a realistic relationship in it was just A+ for me as a reader.

Writing:
I believe I stated this above but Final Girls truly read like a horror movie script. It was so suspenseful and creepy and just constantly built up more and more suspense as the book progressed. It unfolded at such a great pace, never lagging or speeding through things, but rather giving the reader just what they needed to know at the perfect time. There were flashbacks to Pine Cottage that allowed the reader to find out exactly what happened despite Quincy not remembering. It really was just an absolutely fantastic read that was literally impossible to put down once I started. The writing felt like I was reading a long time horror/thriller author's work, but Final Girls is in fact Riley Sager's first novel! It's an absolute thrill ride from start to finish with descriptive and eerie writing that will draw you in and have you looking over your shoulder for the Pine Cottage killer!

Final Girls was definitely one of my favorite reads of 2017 and I highly recommend it to anyone that is a fan of horror movies and books. You'll be drawn in by Quincy's narrow escape and will be left with your jaw on the floor by the final page. Don't miss this exciting debut horror novel that's absolutely impossible to forget!

This was one of my most anticipated books of this year. I LOVE horror, and just from the synopsis, I got a hint of Scream (which is one of my favorite horror movies ever).

This definitely lived up to my expectations.

I'm honestly at a lost for words, this book was SUCH a fun ride. The characters were all painted in such a way that you loved (and hated) everyone for completely different ways.

Pick this up when it comes out 7/11. Do it. Go. Preorder.

*12 hours later*

Now that I think about it, I'm goijg to give this 4 stars. Its honestly not THAT original or memorable, but I still enjoyed the reading experience and the twists and the overal story enough to highly recommend it.

I loved the basic idea, but the execution not so much. I didn't believe that this whole plot is possible and there were many holes in the story. Either way, it was an engaging read and I understand why this book was so hyped.

Quincy is a survivor, she didn't get killed in a mass murder spree and that event left a heavy toll on her. Her personality is far from likeable and I wanted to scream at her many times, and I think that wasn't the author's idea. Police investigation seemed naive and I couldn't relate to any character. I don't think I'll ready other Sager's books.

This debut novel kept me turning pages from very early in the book.  It seems that every mystery I read I say I did not figure out the mystery until the end.  The truth is I rarely try to figure them out at all.  I prefer to enjoy the ride the story takes me on.  Something about this book had me trying to figure it out though.  Twice I just knew I had it figured out.  I was wrong, bad wrong.

Quincy Carpenter is one of three 'final girls'.  According to the novel, the term 'final girls' is taken from horror movies where at the end one girl is left alive to tell the tale and be haunted by the events of the movie.  When Quincy was in college, she and several friends were spending a weekend at a cottage in the woods when all of her friends were massacred.  Quincy was the only one left alive but has no memory of the details of what happened to her and her friends.  

When the novel begins, Lisa, another final girl is found dead.  At first thought to be suicide, but later determined a homicide.  When the other woman in the trio, Sam, arrives at Quincy's apartment to touch base, Quincy does not think it is strange at all and invites Sam into her life and into her apartment to stay indefinitely.  Quincy has more than one issue that makes her an unreliable narrator.  For one, she has that memory loss of the most terrifying night of her life.  She also relies heavily on Xanax for her nerves and after meeting Sam becomes impulsive and sometimes dangerous to herself and others.

To tell much more would be to give away key plot points that would spoil it for those who plan to read this novel.  I will say that nothing is as it seems and the story twists and turns around on itself.  This was the first mystery by this author but I hope it is not the last.  This book had me neglecting everything else in an effort to get to the final reveal.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this mystery.

Great thriller for horror fans. Excellent use of pacing and nonlinear storytelling, which left me flipping pages to see what happens next.

*Book Received in Exchange for Honest Opinion/Review*

This book was just meh for me, it was interesting enough that I wanted to see what happened but the end result and build up left me disappointed. I went into this with the expectation of a thriller, but this wasn't a true thriller or horror read to me. I wasn't shocked by the end and there were so many cringe worthy moments that I was just over it and glad it was done.

So first let me start off by saying that the intimacy scenes in this novel were not even needed and they just added an extra awkward and uncomfortable break from the story line. They didn't flow or fit and seemed very out of place, especially for Quincy. Quincy as a character showed no growth or development over the story other than diving further into the recesses of her mind. Where I was hoping for maturation and self-discovery, I got insanity and lies. Quincy is so fickle and insecure, why would you let a virtual stranger into your home? And then the next rational progression is to start acting out, from beating someone up, shop lifting, and taking way more prescription medication than necessary, it was just a no for me.

In addition to my disconnect with Quincy, the novel was stagnant, there is an abundance of questions, adding to the thrill factor, but each answer doesn't do justice. The synopsis was intriguing but the whole story is very anti-climatic. The ending left a bitter taste in my mouth because of course the cycle is set up to start all over again. Just save yourself the time and go to your next book.

Final Girls by Riley Sager has received a lot of attention so of course I had to see what the hype was all about. I don’t have much experience reading books from the horror genre, but I enjoyed this one. Final Girls is a dark, quick read that will have you questioning the motives of all of the characters. The less you know going into this book, the better.

Thank you to NetGalley, Riley Sager, and Dutton for the opportunity to read Final Girls. It was my pleasure to write an honest review.

Thank you so much NetGalley & Dutton for approving my request for FINAL GIRLS. I kept hearing a lot about the book & I really wanted to read it & I’m so glad I got to! I really enjoyed the book, it’s well written & the way everything unfolded was great. The reveals were so shocking that it took me a couple minutes to process everything. Quincy was a really good main character & her questionable behaviour adds to the psychological factor of the book. Overall, I do recommend getting your hands on the book & giving it a read!

I really loved this book. It's the first in awhile that kept me on my toes and had me guessing. So many thrillers lately are very predictable, but this one threw me for a loop. I think without the final chapter (Four Months After Pine Cottage) it would have been a better ending, but it was still a great read nonetheless.

Final Girls has been receiving a lot of hype since its release and I think it is well worth the hype because it was such a chilling and thrilling read (Why, even Stephen King quoted this: "The first great thriller of 2017 is here.")

Quincy Carpenter, Lisa Milner and Samantha Boyd are known in the press as the Final Girls; a film-geek speak for the last woman standing at the end of a horror movie. Lisa had lost nine sorority sisters to a college dropout's knife; Sam walked away alive after a sicko dubbed as the Sack Man assaulted her during her shift at the Nightlight Inn; and finally our protagonist, Quincy, who managed to escape from Him (the perpetrator she refuses to call by name after all these years) after she fled from Pine Cottage after he had massacred five of her college friends ten years ago. Now the three Final Girls are attempting to put each of their nightmares behind them. As much as they knew each other by name and those horrendous events they had gone through, in reality they have never met.

Quincy is doing well at present though; she has a caring boyfriend Jeff, a popular baking blog and a caring cop who checks on her occasionally ever since he saved her life all those years ago. What makes her life easier to get by is she has no recollection of what really happened that night at Pine Cottage. Like a few missing puzzles, she could only remember the before and after of that horrendous massacre; what happened in between was lost on her and she has no intention of remembering it. Then Lisa Milner was found dead with her wrists slit. Sam Boyd then appears on Quincy's doorstep claiming concern over her after those years laying low. Quincy quickly forged a friendship with Sam but as the days go she realises that Sam is relentless in bringing out that rage which had buried deep inside her since that fateful night. As dire consequences happen one after another after Sam moves into her house, Quincy begins to question everything including Lisa's death and what really happened to her and her five friends at Pine Cottage.

Final Girls was one great psychological suspense with a cast of intriguing characters. What made this such a compelling read is aside from the characters, the plot and the writing style keep the reader engrossed throughout the story. And personally I felt the two parts narrations really brought out the intensity as the reader will see two sides of the story - the present in Quincy's POV and the other in third person narration as flashbacks of what happened at Pine Cottage as the story moves towards the closure. This book had me on edge all the time and while I was curious over the friendship between Sam and Quincy, I was also eager to find out what really happened at Pine Cottage. I could easily picture this story makes its way onto the big screen because it has the combination of a slasher flick (think Scream) and suspense. A fresh voice in the psychological thriller genre and I'll definitely be looking forward to more by this author.

The Final Girls has one of the best premises for a thriller that I have heard in a while, and it was what immediately drew me to the book.

I have to say, I have some pretty mixed feelings about this book. None of the characters were likable. This is not usually something that I would be bothered by, particularly in a thriller, but every. single. character grated on my nerves so bad I had to keep putting the book down. Quinn, especially, made no sense. All of her decisions contradicted each other and just generally seemed like terrible choices.

I loved the idea of taking tropes commonly seen in horror movies and thrillers and creating something new. Unfortunately, I think that in some instances, the tropes won out over any original storytelling. The sex in particular read as weird, and some outdated myths that were never really challenged.

Even though I didn’t find a new favorite in this book, I would still recommend it for some people. For readers who are new to the genre, I think it is a great introduction. More seasoned thriller/horror fans might not be shocked by any of the twists, but all the same it is definitely a fast, enjoyable read.