This was such an amazingly fun book to read! I have very high standards for horror novels and films and I was ecstatic when Final Girls easily surpassed those expectations.

Final Girls is a fascinating mixture of horror and psychological thriller. The reader learns almost immediately of the nightmare the narrator has experienced when she was a college student, but much of the rest of the story involves a roller coaster of emotion as the reader tries to determine how reliable of a narrator Quincy really is.

Final Girls is a great lesson on red herrings. It felt like every time I started to feel like I had a grip on what was going on, I was completely thrown off again. While this could have felt frustratingly misleading, instead I found this mistrust to be a major focal point of the plot and I loved how quickly Sager could make me feel unsettled after thinking I knew a character's intent.

I'm glad I didn't let the synopsis fool me. This book easily could have let the violence and the use of shock value to gain readers, but Riley Sager is a talented writer and Final Girls is so much more than a terrifying story.

Thank you, Netgalley and Dutton for allowing me the chance to read this fantastic novel before its publication date in return for an honest review! I cannot wait to see what Riley Sager writes next.

This book kept my attention from the very beginning, so much so that I delayed other plans and read until it was finished. I thought I had figured out the big mystery at the beginning, but I was wrong. There were plenty of twists and turns and they were very well done. I am not a fan of slasher movies and there were plenty of gruesome parts of this book, but I really enjoyed the plot.

Sit back and enjoy the show!

If you watch or read horror or thrillers, the Final Girl is a favorite trope. This is the beautiful girl who, through a combination of luck and cunning (and with a lot of blood and screaming), survives our killer.

Of course, as we know, it’s never the Final Girl’s last scream. There’s always a part 2 (or 3 or 4 or 44 3D).

Quincy is a Final Girl. She survived the murders at Pine Cottage and now lives a pretty normal existence. Until her past comes back…with a vengeance.

Final Girls is a popcorn read. Pure adrenaline, shady characters who you just can’t trust, and the suspicion that even our Final Girl isn’t exactly who she seems. The suspense here is spot on – both the psychological suspense and some full on hell-bent-for-leather slice and dice slasher pic fun. The author teases us with flashbacks of the past until we finally discover what really happened that bloody night…and why Quincy may need breath enough for one last scream.

This is pure popcorn fun!

See link to Goodreads review

The Final Girls


by Riley Sager

I picked requested this ARC from the publisher after my wonderful friend Lexie @PRationality recommended it to me.

HUGE thank you to Dutton/ Penguin Random House for allowing me the chance to get my hands on it early, especially since the author is local to me.

The Final Girls definitely did not fall into any of my usual genre categories. I’m not huge on Thrillers, though I’ve read a few here and there. The Final Girls is an amazing book! It was so intense in fact that I read the entire thing, cover to cover in ONE night & on a work night no less! From the moment I opened it I was drawn into Quinn’s life, her terror and anxiety and the desperation to be normal again.

Her fiancé Jeff leaves something to be desired however. His character while having no grasp on how impacted she is from the events in her life he has a crappy personality and is not very complex. Fortunately, Jeff being horrible does not in anyway take away from the story and the other supporting characters are really brought to life. I was impressed with the way the author was able to bring certain characters that were already deceased to life. Rodney became a hero in my eyes and I hurt for Amy though I hardly had time to know her. The ending shocked me. I didn’t see it coming at ALL.

I had tried to figure out who HE was many times and I had come up with a multitude of possibilities but I never guessed the truth. The only hint I had was small and near the end and even then I thought that tiny hint was suggesting something else entirely. The content was never too extreme. There was of course some adult scenes, some sexual content and some violence, but nothing so over the top that it was offensive and every bit of it was crucial to the story line. So if you’re a fan of YA Thrillers this book would absolutely be something (in my opinion) that you might enjoy.

Amazing. Riveting. Astonishing.

Read it.

It's a thriller. I kept thinking I understood the story and knew the solution, but I was incredibly and horrendously wrong.

Read it. Seriously.

This is an excellent and twisted novel that will leave readers hanging on the edge of their seats until the bitter end. This book is also unlike any other I have read this year making it a unique and highly recommended read. Riley Sager clearly has a gift with the written word and I can see this book topping the charts upon release!

** Side Note: This review will be posted on all retailers and my blog closer to release date**

It was a fun read, and a definite beach book for the summer or a long vacation flight, but it's a bit cartoony towards the end- for me, the first half was quite compelling, and then it flew off the rails in a cliched thriller way. Enjoyable, but not memorable for me.

I did not finish this one. I started the book and found that I just could not engage with the characters or the story.

This is sharp and intense book, and hard to put down as you get whipped along the story. Twists are to be expected, and any reader hopes to be let in on character secrets, but this a doozy of a story, revealing even darker turns than I expected.

Once I'd picked this one up, there was no way for me to put it down.

I actually explained the premise to my boyfriend halfway through and he guessed the ending then and there, but I thought he was wrong and remained in suspense through the novel. There were many possible ways it could have gone that all were plausible and I loved how this kept me guessing. I did not trust a single character.

The book starts off with Quincy baking and the constant theme of flour and eggs simply adds to the mystique of the topic. It’s horrifying to think of someone with such simple pleasures going through something so horrible, and it’s all the more intriguing to discover the cracks in her shell and the way she’s still dealing with her traumatic past.

The way that the "Final Girls" interacted with that particular label made the story all the more fascinating. The three were nothing like each other and I enjoyed learning about their personalities and their backgrounds.

There were horrifying scenes that had me wincing that I really enjoyed—they definitely brought me into the story and made me suffer alongside Quincy.

One arbitrary reference to race in this book really bothered me—it was incredibly needless and pulled me out of the book completely. I’m not sure what the reasoning behind that choice was, as other than that, the book was perfectly lovely.

I do highly recommend this as a thriller that will keep you in suspense.

While Final Girls is a page turner and well written, the plot and characters are lacking. I was not impressed with the "twists" and I literally hated all of the characters.
Once the first section on Quincy's journey into Central Park was over, I was mentally done. I read the rest most unwillingly in the hopes of being surprised. I was deeply disappointed. I found the ending unbelievable and cloying.

3.5-4 Stars

This was one of those books that I wasn’t all that excited to read. There seems to be too many books about “Girls” out there these days, and I have read so many books in this genre that I have become very adept at guessing the ending. However, every time I picked up this book, I found myself saying “one more chapter” as it got well past my bed time.

Final Girls has a fresh new take on our “girls” and left me turning the pages at a frightening speed and its dark, twisty finale took me completely by surprise. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes book in the psychological thriller category. It is gripping and thrilling and I do not think you will be disappointed.

This was an amazing, suspenseful book that kept me guessing. The ending was a complete surprise and I never saw it coming! I can't wait for more books from this author.

The mystery and twist weren't that shocking but I didn't care because the psychological exploration was so well done. Loved Quincy in all her complexity.

There she is. A dead psychopath at her feet. She's covered in blood and hanging on by a thread. It's how every horror movie ends. The killer is dead and she's survived. The Final Girl. But, what happens to her after the credits roll?
Following a massacre killing all of her friends, Quincy does well moving on and creating a life for herself. Or does she? Dubbed a "Final Girl" by the media, Quincy is thrown into a category with two other women she's never met who've also been massacre survivors. All is seemingly well until one of the other Final Girls is found dead and the other shows up at Quincys door. Are they next?
This book was a creepy, terrifying tour-de-force that kept me biting my nails, checking locked doors, and ultimately losing sleep. The characters were all so believable and complex that they practically jump off the pages the minute they are introduced. I loved the back and forth between what happened to Quincy in the woods and her present day life. This was like reading a horror movie with heart. At times, I felt myself slowing down reading this because I didn't want it to end. The amount of twists and turns in the last quarter of the book were not only mind-blowing, but pure genius. Right when I thought I had some of it figured out, my theory would tumble down like a poor game of Jenga.
A phenomenal and terrifying tale with flawed and doomed characters, not only am I thankful I was able to read this, but I'm anticipating reading it a second time. I simply cannot wait to see what Riley Sager comes out with next!

If you’ve ever seen a horror movie, you’re likely familiar with what a “final girl” is, even if you haven’t heard the term before. A “final girl” is the last woman alive within a horror film, usually of the slasher genre. She’s typically the one that’s left to confront the villain/killer at the end of the movie. Ellen Ripley from Alien, Laurie Strode from Halloween, Alice from Friday the 13th, and Sidney Prescott from Scream would be examples of “final girls”.

Take that theory and let’s bring it to the book Final Girls by Riley Sager. In Sager’s story, we’re introduced to Quincy Carpenter who is a real life final girl. Quinn, as she’s called, and two women who came before her were victims of tragic and violent massacres, leaving only them behind. Due to the circumstances surrounding their situations, the media dubbed them final girls and showering attention on them that none of them were interested in receiving.

Flash forward to 10 years after Quinn’s brush with death. She has a very small support group that contains the only other people who understand exactly what she’s going through: the other “final girls”. Quinn’s life gets turned upside down again when the original “final girl” turns up dead in her home. Quinn must come to terms with this loss and what it means for her before it’s too late.

Going into the story and having not really read the synopsis provided by the publisher, I assumed that the book was a slasher horror story that played out something like Scream. Given what I told you about the book already, this was obviously not the case. What you do get is the story of a woman in denial of her PTSD, having gone through an ordeal that pretty much no one can relate to, which again, is something that they touch on quite a bit.

Final Girls is a fast-paced and compelling page-turner. I started it and was finished a day or so later, even factoring in the fact that I had to work and do other things in between the times when I could sit down and read.

While it’s not technically YA, it felt like a nice and easy read along the lines of something you would get in the YA world, which isn’t meant as disrespect (I love YA!). Some “adult” novels just get bogged down by trying to use serious tones and really uptight storytelling methods that feel a bit stiff when you’re trying to consume a book, if that makes sense, but Final Girls is focused on telling the story and laying out what’s going on in Quinn’s mind from start to finish.

Not only do we get the present day story of what’s happening but we get bits and pieces of the mystery of Pine Cottage, where the massacre of Quinn’s friends occurred. I say mystery due to the fact that Quinn has a severe trauma induced amnesia revolving around the events that transpired there so as we uncover more of the present day story, we get more and more of the story leading up to everything as well.

Final Girls has a lot of twists and turns that I thoroughly enjoyed and while some of them are a bit predictable in nature, I didn’t feel like any of them took me out of the book while I was reading it. Like I said, I was pretty consumed by the book while I was reading it.

Verdict:
Read it! Final Girls is an exhilarating ride from start to finish and does a great job of presenting the characters, story, and the mysteries. If you like books like The Widow or Girl on the Train, I think that Final Girls will definitely be up your alley.

Final Girls will be available in stores on July 11, 2017.

Loved it! It's best to go into this one reading as little about it as possible.

Final Girls was a fun take on horror movie tropes. It was hard to put down. The climax left me somewhat underwhelmed.