Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jul 2017
352 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
"The first great thriller of 2017 is almost here: Final Girls, by Riley Sager. If you liked Gone Girl, you'll like this." - Stephen King
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.
"Starred Review. Sager cleverly plays on horror movie themes from Scream to Single White Female, creating an homage without camp. Despite comparisons to Gone Girl, this debut's strong character development and themes of rebirth and redemption align more closely with Flynn's Dark Places." - Booklist
"Starred Review. Sager does an excellent job throughout of keeping the audience guessing until the final twist. A fresh voice in psychological suspense." - Kirkus
"Sager does a good job building suspense, but some readers may find the book's themes of casual male power and female subservience after trauma deeply unsettling." - Publishers Weekly
"The Final Girls need you. You must sit down with this book, you must read. You must start flipping pages, faster, faster, faster...You are about to gasp. You might drop the book. You may have to look over your shoulder. But you must keep reading. This is the best book of 2017." - Lisa Gardner, New York Times bestselling author of Find Her
"Final Girls is a compulsive read, with characters who are at once unreliable and sympathetic. Just when you think you've figured out the plot, the story pivots in a startling new direction...A taut and original mystery that will keep you up late trying to figure out a final twist that you won't see coming." - Carla Norton, bestselling author of The Edge of Normal and What Doesn't Kill Her
"Part psychological thriller, part homage to slasher flicks and film noir, Final Girls has a little bit of everything: a suspicious death, a damaged heroine, an unwelcome guest who trades in secrets, and not a single character you can trust. Plenty of nail-biting fun!" - Hester Young, author of The Gates of Evangeline
"There are uncommon books and films that crack the 'safe place,' that have us forgetting it's only a story. Nobody knows exactly how this is done, but when it's done, we know it. Final Girls is operating on that plane; you will check your own arm for a wound a character suffers, you will look across the room when a character hears someone coming, and you will wonder if you yourself have the mettle to endure being a Final Girl. - Josh Malerman, author of Bird Box
"Smart and provocative, with plenty of twists and turns, Final Girls will have the reader racing breathlessly toward its shocking conclusion." - Sophie Littlefield, award-winning author of The Guilty One and The Missing Place
This information about Final Girls was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Final Girls is the first thriller from Riley Sager, a pseudonym for an author who has previously published under another name. Riley is a native of Pennsylvania, a writer, editor, and graphic designer who lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
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